Yesterday, a senior citizen of Bengaluru received an abusive call from a mobile number 9051660028 stating that he is from Kolkata Police and made some unfound allegations against the called person and threatened him with dire consequences.
The True caller ID of the person shows his name as Bhusan and indicates that he belongs to the Police in Kolkata.
It is obvious that any ordinary person would be unnerved by an abusive call claiming to be from the Police and more so if he is innocent and is a senior citizen. It causes a mental disturbance and harassment for which Indian law makers created a section called Section 66A in ITA 2008 which the Supreme Court decided to scrap because of its inability to understand the objective of the section. However such harassment using the telephone is still an offence under IPC and the caller from the mobile 9051660028, who ever he is, is guilty of this offence.
I suppose Kolkata Police will trace this number and the calls made out of this number, details of which have already been sent to the Commissioner of Kolkata through e-mail and prevent such abuse of police power.
There is a possibility that the call might have been made by a person impersonating himself in the name of a genuine police person and True Caller could have provided a wrong identity. I request True Caller and Vodafone to clarify the identity of the caller and clear the name of Kolkata Police if such an impersonation has taken place.
We have many instances in recent days that either genuine Police officers or those impersonating themselves as one such have indulged in criminal activities including extortion, kidnapping etc. Hence it cannot be ruled out that this is an incident of a criminal trying to extort money by threatening a person with a false accusation etc. We have not forgotten the age old case of the Mumbai Fraud by a General Manager of Gujarat Ambuja Cements who had used the name of Kolkata Police to extract around Rs 2 crores from an NRI threatening him that some body who was his social media contact had committed suicide and Kolkata Police has registered a case against him etc…
I therefore look forward to the Commissioner of Kolkata taking this issue seriously and conducting a thorough investigation. In the meantime, any member of the public can also respond if there exists any Bhusan in the number 9051660028 and whether he is a police officer from Kolkata and if so does he have a record of making such abusive calls.
I demand that Vodafone in particular confirm to me on my personal e-mail available on this website whether the name of the owner of the SIM 9051660028 is Bhusan. If not who is the real owner of the number and whether any calls were made from this number to a Bangalore number at 20.28 and 22.48 besides missed calls in between. On request from Vodafone, I will provide the detail of the called number if required.
I want the public to be vigilant about such calls and report it to higher officials in the Police along with the recording if possible so that honest Police officers can stand up and control such rogue elements within the force or those who are misusing the name of police.
Naavi
I have received a confirmation from a police officer that such impersonation in the name of the Police has come to their notice once earlier and it is done so that public hesitate to file complaints.
There was one query on why I think Vodafone should give the details… The offence here has been committed with the use of a SIM provided by Vodafone and hence it is an intermediary under Section 79 of ITA 2000/8. Now a notice has been given and the first due diligence requirement for Vodafone is to archive relevant information so that “Potential Evidence” is not destroyed in the normal course. Also it is the victim’s right to pursue any legal option for which the information about the identity of the potential criminal is necessary. If the victim can identify himself to the satisfaction of Vodafone say if he is also a customer of Vodafone and there is KYC, then they should act immediately because they are protecting the interest of another customer who is more genuine than the accused.
This is done by using malicious APP