Bhubaneswar, July 10: Pradeep Choudhury, the 27-year-old arrested along with three others by Berhampur police on Saturday over suspected links with underworld don Chhota Rajan, was a software engineer, police said today.

The police said the gang had been in touch with other criminals in Delhi, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad and involved in using SIM boxes to divert international calls to local calls in order to avoid police scrutiny for the past one year.

A team of officials of the state crime branch, along with two officials of the Mumbai crime branch, today visited Gopalpur. They discussed with the local police officials, who arrested the four. The state crime branch today prayed a local court in Berhampur, seeking remand of the four. The Mumbai crime branch officials also took a look at the seized SIM boxes.

The police have seized five China-made SIM boxes from the possession of the accused Choudhury and his associates Laxmi Narayan Sharoff, Suresh Kumar Satpathy and Santosh Kumar Sahu. They said Choudhury was the distributor of several leading cellular networks.

"The probe has revealed that the group had procured more than 400 SIM cards fraudulently to use those in the SIM boxes. Choudhury said he came in contact with a Hyderabad gang, which managed to lure him to procure the SIM boxes. We are investigating to find out the exact amount of money the gang took," said a crime branch official.

The anti-extortion cell of Mumbai police had come to Berhampur a fortnight ago during investigation of a case, in which Suresh Pujari, a gangster from Hong Kong and a close associate of Chhota Rajan, had demanded Rs 2 crore as ransom from a Mumbai-based realtor over the phone. Mumbai police had traced the extortion call to be made from Berhampur. The police said this was the first incident of cyber crime racket executed using SIM boxes or smaller version of telephone exchanges. Subsequently, they contacted the local police, who raided various places and arrested three persons from Berhampur and one from Chhatrapur.