Shillong: The Department of Telecom (DoT) has detected around 1.52 lakh suspected connections subscribed based on forged documents involving many Points of Sale of different Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in six states of the North East — Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.

More than 1.47 lakh mobile connections that failed in re-verification process have been disconnected by TSPs in the region. So far, TSPs have blacklisted 493 Points of Sale and registered 71 police complaints against the suspected persons for further investigation.

Cybercrimes, financial frauds and antisocial activities are mainly committed through SIMs fraudulently subscribed on forged documents.

To detect and weed out such suspected SIMs, DoT has taken up the initiative of conceptualising and implementing an innovative and indigenous Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition Powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification (ASTR) — the NextGen platform aimed for preventing the cybercrimes. The system uses subscriber images and database of TSPs to detect fraudulent subscriptions.

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