The home affairs ministry on Tuesday directed the agencies concerned to take legal action against any irregularities in mobile subscriber identity module card registration to curb crimes such as extortion, harassment of girls and women and intimidation of people over mobile.
The home minister, Sahara Khatun, at a meeting on containing mobile phone crimes she presided over at the secretariat, asked mobile operators to take stern action against distributors and retailers and users not maintaining the latest government directives about SIM card registration.
‘Mobile operators have been directed to take action against distributors and distributors to take action against retailers over any irregularities in SIM card registration,’ Sahara told reporters after the meeting.
She said the law enforcement agencies were also directed to go tough against the people doing crimes over mobile.
The minister said mobile operators had also been asked to file cases against the retailers selling SIM cards without approval of the companies concerned.
The state minister for home, Shamsul Haque, home secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikder, senior officials of the law enforcement agencies and the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission and representatives of all the six mobile operators, among others, attended the meeting.
The home ministry’s directives came against the backdrop of the failure of the authorities in stopping irregularities in SIM card registration and growing incidents of crimes over mobiles despite repeated efforts to strengthen vigilance on the sale of SIM cards and the distributors and retailers.
‘The lawmen have been asked to gather evidence of crimes over mobiles so that the people involved in extortion, harassment of girls and women and other crimes can be brought to book,’ Sahara said.
The meeting was told mobile operators in keeping with a decision of the previous meeting had already submitted a list of 721 distributors and 1,85,000 retailers to the telecoms regulatory commission. Intelligence agencies are now monitoring their operation.
The six mobile operators have about 63 million subscribers, according to the official BTRC record.
The government at an inter-ministerial meeting in July decided to tighten registration of SIM cards and prohibit its sales to people aged below 18 to curb crimes and misuse of mobiles.
The mobile operators were asked to submit the list of dealers and retailers to the regulatory commission by September 30.
In keeping with the latest directives, SIM card buyers require to provide copies of the national identity cards.
It requires of a SIM card dealer or retailer to have the minimum educational qualification of the secondary school certificate and the people appointed earlier without the qualification would need to be trained in SIM card registration process.
Business communities on various occasions have complained to the government that incidents of extortion and intimidation of people over mobile had increased alarmingly in recent times.
