Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has told all private mobile telephone operators to install equipment identify register (EIR) devices, by November this year, to track and identify handsets using fake International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers. According to a BTRC official, the regulatory body issued the instruction to the mobile operators following failure of police and intelligence to detect these users.
People of questionable integrity use fake IMEI numbers on their mobile phones to escape detection and arrests.
An intelligence agency informed the home ministry in a report that it had failed to identify leaders and activists of terror and militant groups that were using fake IMEI numbers on their cell phones, sources in the home ministry said.
The director of spectrum division of BTRC, Lt Col Tushar, yesterday told The Independent that they had directed the mobile operators to install the EIR within November to identify cyber criminals.
“If this is done, we will able to identify people who are using fake IMEI numbers on their mobile phone sets,” he said.
Lt Col Tushar also said they had arrested a man named Abu Zafar from Uttara in the city on Thursday night. Zafar operated a racket of selling phoney IMEI numbers for mobiles.
The National Monitoring Centre (NMC), a government mobile and land phone watchdog, is tracking mobile telephones of suspects or alleged criminals. However, it has so far failed to ferret out users of fake IMEI identities.
The NMC has advised BRTC to ask mobile operators to stop marketing cheap mobiles.
“If the government does not take necessary steps to prevent people from using mobile phones with fake IMEI numbers, subversive acts of terrorists and militant groups would go undetected,” sources warned.
The NMC has been set up comprising various intelligence agencies such as the Directorate General of the Forces Intelligence (DGFI), Special Security Force (SSF), National Security Intelligence (NSI), Special Branch (SB) of police and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).
