The Special Task Force (STF) of the Odisha Police, based on intelligence inputs about OTP sharing to anti-national elements and criminals, conducted raids and arrested three persons on Saturday.
Later, the arrested accused were forwarded to the court of Bhubaneswar SDJM
The accused were identified as Pathanisamant Lenka and Saroj Kumar Nayak of Nayagarh district and Soumya Pattanaik of Jajpur district. Notably, Pathanisamant Lenka is an ITI teacher, sources said.
The STF seized 19 costly mobile phones (including Apple phone), 47 SIM cards, 61 ATM cards, laptops and 23 SIM covers from the possession of the accused trio.
The agency said the accused were fraudulently procuring huge numbers of SIM cards in the names of others and used them to sell the OTPs (linked/generated using the SIMs) to various clients, including some Pakistani Intelligence Operatives (PIOs) or ISI agents in Pakistan as well as in India.
In return, they were paid by some Pakistani agents based in India. Moreover, they were found to be in touch with a woman PIO agent, who was arrested under the Official Secrets Act in a honey-trap case in Rajasthan in 2022, STF IG Jaynaryan Pankaj said.
Pankaj said the OTPs were used to create various accounts or channels on social media like WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram and also on online shopping sites like Amazon and Flipkart. These are also used in opening email accounts. Most thought that these accounts are owned by an Indian, but actually they were being operated from Pakistan.
These social media platforms would then be used in various kinds of anti-India activities like spying, communication with terrorists, radicalisation, running anti-India propaganda, fuelling anti-India and divisive sentiments on social media, sextortion and honey-trapping,
As these accounts are registered or linked to Indian mobile numbers, people find them trustworthy. The accounts opened on online shopping platforms are also used to supply items to terrorists and other anti-India elements.
Apart from these, they were also in business of creating and selling mule accounts through social media groups which are again used in various kinds of crime, the IG said.
