Hyderabad, May 20 -- Hyderabad Police on Wednesday, May 20, said they arrested 66 people, including 20 telecom point-of-sale agents, across 13 states in a sweeping crackdown on a "ghost SIM" network that was allegedly the communications backbone for cyber frauds totalling Rs 101.87 crore.

Dubbed Operation Octopus 3.0, the drive saw 18 specially constituted teams operate continuously over seven days, seizing 544 SIM cards linked to 76 documented cybercrime cases nationwide. Of the SIMs seized, 432 had not yet been deployed and were recovered sealed, awaiting despatch to fraud networks, the police said.

Of the 66 arrested, 44 were ghost SIM holders, 20 were point of sale (PoS) agents or telecom promoters and two were ghost SIM suppliers. ...