Mohd Irfan @ Rajji v. State of NCT of Delhi

TALWANT SINGH, J SEPTEMBER 15, 2022/pa

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* IN THE HIGH COURT OF DELHI AT NEW DELHI % Order pronounced on 15.09.2022 + BAIL APPLN. 1243/2022 IRFAN ALI ..... Petitioner Through: Mr. Rajive Maini, Ms. Shriya Maini, Advocates. versus STATE OF NCT OF DELHI & ANR. ..... Respondents Through: Mr. N.S.Bajwa, APP for State with Insp. Chaitanya Abhijit, PS Cyber Police Station (Central Distt. + BAIL APPLN. 2059/2022 & CRL.M.A. 12929/2022 MOHD IRFAN @ RAJJI ..... Petitioner Through: Mr. Rajive Maini, Ms. Shriya Maini, Advocates. versus STATE OF NCT OF DELHI ..... Respondent Through: Mr. N.S. Bajwa, APP for State. CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE TALWANT SINGH Talwant Singh, J.: 1. These two bail applications have been moved by accused/applicants Mohd. Irfan alias Rajji and Irfan Ali, who are co-accused in FIR No. 30/2021 registered at PS Hauz Qazi under Section 420/406/120B IPC and Section 4/20/21/25 of Indian Telegraph Act and Section 65 of Information Technology Act. 1.1 Notice was issued. The State has filed Status Report. Nominal Rolls of the accused/applicants have been also called from the jail. 2. The factual matrix of the present case is given in the Status Report. A complaint was received in PS Hauz Qazi on 05.02.2021 from Government officials that one illegal international telecom exchange, setup in Chawri Bazar, Delhi has been found, which is using the advance technology for routing international calls of foreign countries like US, UAE, Canada, Nepal, Australia and many more to India via internet and in this way, bypassing the international and national call gateways of India. This exchange can handle 2500 international calls simultaneously and is causing loss of about Rs.1.20 crore per day to the Government and telecom companies. This exchange could handle 3 lac international calls per day. 2.1 These calls are then routed towards Indian telecom/mobile numbers through heavy servers and software tools. The setup was fully automatic. Since this call route was internet based, so it is difficult for Indian Law Enforcement Agencies to monitor and back trace the foreign callers, so it is posing a grave threat to national security. 2.2 Raid was conducted where two SIP servers of IBM and HP along with other paraphernalia were recovered. The present FIR was registered and investigation was transferred to District Cyber Cell, Central. One accused, Imran Khan was arrested on 06.02.2021, who disclosed that his maternal uncle, namely Zulifiqar Ali asked him to arrange a room where connection of JIO will be installed. His elder brother, Yousuf handed over the room to Zulifiqar Ali, who started working from there. He shared his ID with Zulifiqar Ali as he needed fast internet connection of Airtel. 2.3 The said Zulifiqar Ali paid Imran Khan Rs.5,000/- for using his ID and assured him to pay more in future. Imran Khan further disclosed that Zulifiqar Ali installed two machines and started dealing in international calls. Statement of the person, who installed the internet connection, namely, Kamal Kishore was recorded. 2.4 One Ganga Singh was also examined, who had also installed internet connection at the instance of Zulifiqar Ali. 2.5 One Harish Kumar also stated that he had installed high-speed internet connection on the order placed by Zulifiqar Ali. 2.6 One Usman Miyan S/o Tarik was examined, who was introduced to Zulifiqar Ali by one Irfan and he had installed SIP Trunk after collecting the necessary documents from M/S Adeeba Enterprises, a firm of Zulifiqar Ali. The use of the said SIP Trunk for making international calls was forbidden. Persons, who had received international calls, were examined and their statements were recorded. 2.7 On further inquiry, the Government officials gave details of the losses caused by installation of the illegal international telecom exchange by the culprits and the total loss was estimated to be around Rs.103.45 crores. Efforts were made to find out the source of the seized case property. The IBM and SIP server was initially sold to Vodafone India Ltd.