JAIPUR: The Rajasthan IT department has ordered Vodafone Idea to pay one of its customers remaining Rs 27.5 lakh out of the total Rs 68.5 lakh which was illegally transferred from his account using a duplicate cellphone SIM card issued by the telecom company without proper verification of customer identification documents.
The case pertains to one Bhanu Pratap, who was issued a duplicate SIM belonging to another person and transferred a total of Rs 68.5 lakh from IDBI bank to his other accounts. Later, he returned Rs 44 lakh but the victim is yet to receive the rest of the money. On May 25, 2017, Krishna Lal Nain’s Vodafone Idea mobile number stopped working. He went to the telecom company’s store in Hanumangarh and registered a complaint.
Though he got a new number, it remained inactivated despite repeated complaints. In Jaipur, he went to one of the company’s stores and again submitted a complaint for SIM activation, which happened the next day. By then, the culprit had transferred Rs 68.5 lakh from Nain’s IDBI Bank account using the OTPs generated.
Not only was the duplicate SIM card issued without proper verification of personal data, the delay in activation of the new SIM card and the transfer of money from the account during the period raised serious questions.
