Senior Civil Judge Mahmood Haroon on Monday sentenced an accused involved in illegal gateway exchange to judicial lock up and ordered him to reappear before the court on October 10.
Earlier on Saturday, Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) got the two-day physical remand of an accused for his alleged involvement in an illegal gateway exchange case from Haroon, while the other accused in the case, a female Uzbekistan national, was discharged from all allegations under Women Protection Act (WTA) for becoming a state witness.
The Uzbek Gahramanova Aliyya was arrested on August 10 and granted bail the same day from the said court for her alleged involvement in the case while the other accused named Ishaq Mashi was arrested on September 23.
A first information report (FIR) vide 03/11 was registered against Uzbek national Aliyya under section 31 of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) 1996, r/w 36, 37 Electronic Transaction Ordinance (ETO) 2002, r/w 420, 468, 471, 109 PPC with FIA Cyber Crime Circle (CCC). The complaint into the case was PTA director enforcement.
According to FIA, PTA through vide letter No. PTA/ZD/RWP/lVT/02/2011 dated 22/02/2011 on the subject: Illegal Termination of International Traffic Bypassing Legal Gateway Exchange, to the FIA Islamabad Director mentioned that the Authority had received a report that the IP 202.61.60.8, allocated to LinkDotNet was being used for illegal voice call termination. The information obtained from the operator revealed that the said IP was associated with a LinkDotNet connection at a house in Sector G-11/1, Islamabad. PTA through systems deployed for monitoring and reconciliation of International Telephony Traffic (ITT) pointed out that Aliyya along with Mashi, without obtaining any licenses, was involved in the illegal termination of International Voice Traffic using an unauthorized VoIP gateway installed at sector G-11/1 Islamabad, which is an offence under section 31 of the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-Organisation) Act, 1996.
The plaintiff submitted relevant record of all the calls terminated through this system and the FIA accordingly initiated legal action by registering a case against the offense and obtained search warrants from the court of the Judicial Magistrate.
Accordingly, implementing the court’s permission, a raiding party was constituted comprising FIA and PTA officers that raided at a house in sector G-11/1 in order to unearth a gateway exchange being operated for illegal termination of international voice traffic using VoIP. According to the FIA, the accused female along with Mashi and other people had established illegal gateway exchanges in the federal capital where international calls were entertained at source country(s) and converted into VoIP and were transmitted through the internet to Pakistan where the illegal gateway exchanges containing mobile SIMs / IMSIs were installed.
The calls were converted from VoIP to GSM and transmitted to destination telephone numbers. It appeared to the recipients that calls were coming from local mobile telephone numbers. The original overseas telephone numbers were masked by the legal gateway exchange at source country hence causing the illegal loss of millions of rupees to Pakistan. Earlier, the FIA had obtained arrest warrants for the accused Aliyya and Mashi on August 1 from the competent court.,
On Monday, FIA produced Mashi before the court where the Aliyya became a state witness and stated that whatever she had done was on Mashi’s instructions and Mashi was responsible for the illegal business of gateway exchange. Besides this, FIA produced an integration report which stated that Mashi played a vital role in the case and the female had been involved in the case. The senior civil judge in his order marked that the accused female became a state witness and after evidence was provided which proved that she was not concerned with the illegal gate way exchange, hence under Women Protection Act, she could be discharged from the case.
Meanwhile the said judge granted a 5-day judicial remand of the accused male and ordered the FIA to produce the accused on October 10.
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