Thursday, February 24 2005 16:35 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Concerned over the alleged scam involving hundreds of crores in rerouting of international calls, premier investigating agency CBI has launched a probe into working of Reliance Infocomm and some other top private telecom operators.

The probe by CBI comes amid a major crackdown by Department of Telecom and its PSUs which have imposed stiff penalties that have been challenged by Reliance Infocomm.

The CBI, which has initiated the probe suo-motu, has asked the concerned authorities to furnish relevant details of international telecom traffic which is alleged to have been rerouted as local calls to avoid payment to levy to telecom PSUs, CBI officials said.

The official said the companies had been asked to provide relevant details to the Economic Offences Wing of the CBI.

The officials, however, clarified that no case has been registered against Reliance and other telecom companies.

According to CBI, the illegal operators were maintaining parallel telecom networks over and above the licensed networks. Loss of revenue is to the tune of a few hundred crores to the Government of India as well as to the PSUs.

Apart from revenue loss, these illegal channels were also a security threat to the country as anti-national elements could use these channels which could not be policed by the Law enforcing agencies.

Secondly these channels were being used to avoid payment of Access Deficit Charges (ADC).

Earlier, DoT had imposed a penalty of Rs 150 crore on Reliance Infocomm for violating the license terms and conditions by illegally rerouting international calls as local ones.

The penalty was challenged by Reliance Infocomm in the TDSAT. Hearing in the case has been completed and judgement has been reserved.

Similarly, the two telecom PSUs - MTNL and BSNL - have raised a demand of over Rs 550 crore on Reliance and part of which has already been paid by the company.