Bhubaneswar: The police in Odisha’s Keonjhar district today claimed to have busted a fake SIM card racket having close links with the notorious Jamtara gang in Jharkhand.

The police have arrested four persons of the racket and seized over 500 fake SIM cards from them.

The arrested have been identified as Raj Kishore Jena, Tapan Kumar Jena, Subrat Kumar Jena and Pradeep Kumar Jena of Ghasipura and Ramchandrapur areas of Keonjhar, police said.

The police have seized as many as 538 fake SIM cards, 18 mobile phones, five biometric scanners, 25 ATM cards, a laptop, seven bank passbooks and several other documents from the arrested persons, said Keonjhar SP Nitin Kusalkar.

The police have registered a case against the accused under various Sections of the IPC and IT Act, he added.

According to police, the four accused used to collect fake SIM cards of various telecom service providers through forged documents and other methods and provide them to cyber criminals in several states, including the notorious Jamtara gang of neighbouring Jharkhand.

“The four accused have provided around 4,000 fake SIM cards to cyber criminals of several states including Jharkhand and Rajasthan. They were charging around Rs 2,000 for each pre-activated SIM card. The cyber criminals used to commit various financial frauds by using the pre-activated SIM cards. We will contact the telecom service providers and urge them to deactivate those fake SIM cards,” said the SP.