By Mizan Rahman
Cheap Chinese mobile phones being used extensively have frustrated Bangladesh's ongoing campaign to track down militants and terrorists across the country.
The National Monitoring Centre (NMC), a government mobile and land phone watchdog agency, has failed to identify criminals, including the leaders and activists of terrorists and militant groups, as they use the cheap Chinese mobile phone sets for conducting their activities.
Already the intelligence and the law enforcement agencies have asked the government to take necessary steps to stop the use of the cheap Chinese mobile phone sets soon.
Sources in the Home Ministry said in Dhaka yesterday that as all mobile handsets have a unique International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number as per the international mobile phone using security system, cheap Chinese phone sets have the same IMEI number in more than one handset. This multiplicity is creating problem for NMC in tracking mobile phones of militants, they
added.
A top official of the Home Ministry said the members of different terrorist and militant groups have been using these cheap handsets to instruct their cadres to carry out subversive operations across Bangladesh with a view dodging the NMC.
"If the government does not stop the import of these mobile phone handsets soon, the concerned authorities are likely to fail to nab the
culprits," he said.
He said that the authorities had asked the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC), a regulatory body of the private mobile operators, to find out a way to stop the use of these handsets in the country.
Members of the NMC are tracking phone calls of criminals, militants, political leaders and other users to remain informed about their activities across the country.
Not only the NMC, but other intelligence units of the law enforcement agencies like RAB, the criminal investigation department and the SB are tracking phone calls independently, according to the source.
Meanwhile, a thousand mobile SIM cards have been seized by the NMC over the last three months and the concerned SIM users have been arrested.
A number of terrorists and members of different militant agencies have been arrested by tracking their phone calls and analysing the call data record (CDR) over a couple of years, he added.
The NMC is tracking 100-phone calls everyday from the switchboard of different phone operators and the chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) is monitoring the NMC's activities, sources in the home ministry said.
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