Detective agencies held for illegally providing mobile phone CDRs

City crime branch sleuths on Tuesday arrested two persons who were running detective agencies and have busted a racket, wherein Call Detail Records (CDRs) of mobile phones were being illegally provided to people. The police suspect mobile company officials and government officers who are entitled to get access to CDRs to be behind this racket.

The duo are Laxman Thakur, 30, a resident of Juhu Koliwada, and Kirtesh Kavi, 44, a resident of Malad.

According to the police, specific information was received that one Laxman Thakur is running an unauthorised agency 'Mastermind Detective Agency' in Juhu and had also given advertisement about the same on the internet. It was learnt that Thakur used to illegally get CDRs and mobile tower locations of people and sell them.

On January 25, through a dummy customer, the police contacted Thakur on his mobile number and inquired if he can provide CDRs.

"Thakur said that he can give three months' CDRs for Rs 50,000. Later the same day, Thakur met our dummy customer in a hotel at Hill Road in Bandra. The customer then gave a Reliance mobile number to Thakur and sought three months' CDR and gave an advance of Rs 10,000," said a crime branch officer.

Thakur said the CDRs will be given at 4.30 pm on Tuesday. A police team then laid a trap at Hill Road on Tuesday. "Thakur arrived at the hotel where he was supposed to meet the dummy customer, showed him a printout of the CDRs and demanded the remaining Rs 40,000. We nabbed Thakur and seized 16 pages of CDRs (from November 1, 2016 to January 28, 2017) of the mobile number. Thakur told the police that he had received the CDR from a security and detective service agency at Goregaon (E)," said the officer.

He then told the police that he had bought the CDRs from the Goregaon-based agency, owned by one Kirtesh Kavi for Rs 25,000, and was selling it for Rs 50,000.

"When we scanned Thakur's WhatsApp conversation with Kavi, we found that CDRs of several mobile numbers were being sought from him and money was also deposited in bank accounts. Also, Thakur's phone records revealed that several people had sought CDRs from him. During interrogation, Kavi said he used to get CDRs from another person," said the officer.

"It is possible that these CDRs were procured from the servers of mobile companies. We are also probing if the gang had provided CDRs to anti-social elements," the officer said.

The police registered a case at the Bandra police station on charges of cheating and common intention of the Indian Penal Code and related sections of Information Technology Act and Indian Telegraph Act. The police have seized CDRs of three months, three laptops, an iPad and four mobile phones.