A SIM card kiosk near Patna Junction. Telegraph picture

Patna, Aug. 28: Calls for ransom have been rampant in the state capital but a call to bump off the city superintendent of police (central) Shivdeep Lande has made the cops sit up and moving.

Police said the phone call made to Lande on Saturday — where the caller claimed to be a Maoist area commander of Munger — was made from the outskirts of the state capital.

“The cellphone tower location of the caller was traced to somewhere around Bihta area, 45km from Patna. A police team has been sent to the place to track him. The mobile number (7654738472) from which the call was made has been switched off but the police have come to know about two persons whom the person had called from the number. The caller will be tracked down soon,” Lande said today.

The call to Lande was the latest in the “trend” of unknown persons calling to intimidate legislators and top officials. After Lande became their target, the police have launched a drive against telecom company representatives, who sell SIM cards without verifying the documents properly at makeshift kiosks across Patna.

The drive, which started on Saturday, saw as many as nine representatives of telecom companies from the Gandhi Maidan police station area being arrested. Several incomplete documents were seized.

Lande told The Telegraph that the drive would also start in other places across the state. The officer added that the drive had become important considering the fact that sale of SIM cards without proper verification was turning out to be a threat in the city. “The police get many complaints from young girls about harassment in form of crank and embarrassing calls. The problem is tracing such numbers, as callers tend to destroy the SIM cards soon after use. Since many kiosks of telecom companies sell cards without verification, it becomes easier for them (callers) to get one. The problem takes a larger scale, resulting in extortion and threatening calls,” the officer said.

Recently, anonymous calls for extortion threatened legislators of different areas. On July 4, the BJP’s Lakhisarai MLA, Vijay Kumar Sinha, received a threat call from an anonymous caller. A day earlier, Vinod Kumar Singh, the BJP MLA from Pranpur in Katihar district, also received a similar call on his cellphone.

The police said none of the documents recovered yesterday from the representatives of cellphone service providers were complete. “The bosses of these representatives set a target for them. Under pressure, they sell SIM cards without verifying documents of buyers. Investigations have proved that the application forms have pictures, telephone numbers of different people for one SIM card. There is also a norm of residence verification for a new customer but it is never done. Among the nine people arrested, there are nodal officers of the area,” Lande said.