The People’s Republic of China is notorious for espionage and crimes against humanity. Seldom have Chinese missions against India been exposed. However, the one which has now come to the fore could very well alter bilateral ties between the two Asian giants. A Chinese national Junwei Han, 36, was arrested in India by the Border Security Force and is currently in the custody of the West Bengal Police. Han was infiltrating into India from Bangladesh and was nabbed in South Bengal’s Malda district. Upon rigorous interrogation, shocking details about the man’s operations have come to light.
Han has reportedly confessed to smuggling as many as 1,300 Indian SIM cards, procured by forging documents, to China in the last two years. These SIM cards were subsequently used by a gang of Chinese individuals to hack accounts and commit financial frauds in India, a suspected activity of the Chinese Intelligence agency. The Chinese national revealed that such SIM cards were smuggled into China by them by hiding the chips in undergarments.
In a statement, BSF South Bengal Frontier said, “Han Junwei has been a wanted criminal and upon thorough interrogation, shocking facts have come to the fore. He has so far taken around 1300 Indian SIMs to China using fake documents from India. Junwei and his associates used to hide the SIM in undergarments and send these to China. These SIMs were used to hack accounts and to carry out several kinds of financial frauds. Their purpose was to cheat people using SIM to get their money out of money transaction machines.”
Han is reportedly an operative of a Chinese intelligence agency, which conducts operations against India. As per a Times of India report, Indian security agencies are pursuing the case and its developments very closely, since the involvement of a Chinese intelligence agency directly infringes upon India’s national security. All the telecom operators are learnt to have been directed to report to the agencies concerned soon after they find any suspicious link related to any SIM cards being operated from outside India.
The TOI report added the agencies have sought from these telecom operators a list of all Indian SIM cards being operated from China since 2010. According to the Hindustan Times, a four-member team of the Anti-Terrorist Squad of Uttar Pradesh Police reached Malda on Friday morning to interrogate the accused and take over the case.
According to a BSF official quoted by HT, “It is here that the role of specialised agencies like the ATS and NIA comes into play. The electronic gadgets need to be scanned as a lot of information could be hidden in them.” It is crucial for Indian agencies to get to the bottom of this scandal in order to ascertain how and to what degree the Chinese have compromised India and its national security.