Terrorists have used illegally registered cell-phone SIMs during the attack on Sri Lankan cricket team and succeeded in hiding their identifications. This was stated by Senate Standing Committee on Interior Chairman Senator Talha Mehmood while addressing a press conference at Parliament House, after Standing Committee meeting here on Saturday.
"These SIMs were registered on some fictitious names while the terrorists used them for execution of deadly attack on Sri Lankan team," Talha Mehmood said. Besides members of the Standing Committee, the meeting was attended by Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah, Chairmen of PTA, Nadra and CDA, officials of Islamabad and Rawalpindi Police and representatives of different concerned departments.
Answering a question regarding attack on Sri Lankan cricket team, Talha Mehmood replied that he saw involvement of neighbouring country, adding that the neighbouring country made this attempt to degrade Pakistan internationally and bring the cricket activities in Pakistan to an end. He assured the media that soon after completion of investigation, he would hold a meeting of the Standing Committee on this issue and it would an open to media.
Talha Mehmood said that illegal SIMs were visibly behind each and every crime and terrorist act in the country and once "we block illegal SIMs the crime rate will decline. Sale of unregistered and unauthorised SIMs is still going on, which is instrumental in increase the incidents of kidnapping for ransom, terrorist activities and many other crimes," Talha said.
He said that this would be brought to an end by dealing the people involved in this business with an iron hand. He said the clues of all the crimes, including theft, robbery, murder and terrorist activities had been detected in the uncertified SIMs as per the investigations of the relevant authorities.
Senator Talha Mehmood expressed his dismay over the failure of authorities to block the sale of illegal and unregistered SIMs in the country, saying that he was informed that one person had got 142 SIMs registered on his name. "This is violation of PTA rules that allows only 10 SIMs to one person," he added.
He asked the authorities to investigate the matter and submit report before the committee in five days. Talha Mehmood told media that up till January 31, about 1.2 million illegal SIMs were blocked. He said that in February, 1.99 million people applied for new SIMs with different companies, out of which 1.547 million applicants were cleared and SIMs were issued and registered, while 0.4 million applications were rejected for not having complete data.
He said that the Standing Committee was informed about the failure of Ministry of Information Technology in providing data about eight million SIMs to the Nadra. He asked the ministry to submit a detailed report on this issue on March 11. The meeting told the PTA officials to make sure that no pre-activated SIMs would be available in the market and SIMs would be activated after complete verification from the Nadra.
The Standing Committee also asked the PTA, Nadra and the law-enforcement agencies to make sure that the orders of the committee were implemented that unverified and unregistered SIMs were blocked. Talha Mehmood also expressed concern over embezzlements in accounts of National Assembly and Senate Employees housing Society, saying that large scale bungling was found in the housing society.
"There is need to probe the matter as initially Rs 160 million was available in the account of the housing society, while there is only Rs 100 million remaining, whereas the land was reduced to 435 kanals from actual size of 600 kanals," he added. He ordered the concerned authorities to immediately freeze the accounts of the officials of housing society till the completion of investigation, and asked them to submit a detailed report in the committee.
Comments
Comments are closed.