The Department of Telecommunications has disconnected more than five crore fraudulent mobile connections over the past two years as part of a sustained crackdown on telecom-enabled cybercrime, alongside recovering over 12 lakh lost and stolen phones and preventing cyber frauds worth more than ₹1,800 crore. The figures were unveiled at a security conference in Hyderabad that brought together telecom regulators, police and banking officials to coordinate their response to a fraud ecosystem that increasingly runs through mobile networks.
A Coordinated Front Against Telecom-Enabled Fraud
The conference, organised by the DoT’s Andhra Pradesh Licensed Service Area unit, drew senior officials from the Department of Telecommunications, Hyderabad Police, the Telangana Cyber Security Bureau, the Crime Investigation Department, the Reserve Bank of India, the State Bank of India and major telecom operators. Director General (Telecom) Anand Khare said the numbers reflected sustained departmental effort, stressing that coordination among government departments, law enforcement, banks and telecom operators remains central to strengthening India’s digital security ecosystem.
The rationale behind targeting fake connections directly is straightforward. Fraudulently obtained SIM cards are the backbone of much of India’s organised cybercrime, used to execute phishing attacks, impersonation schemes, investment scams and digital payment fraud precisely because they offer a disposable, hard-to-trace communication channel. Removing these numbers at scale, officials argue, cuts off the infrastructure fraudsters depend on before a single rupee changes hands.
How the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator Works
Central to the prevention figure is the Financial Fraud Risk Indicator, a technology-driven framework built to flag suspicious telecom-linked financial transactions at an early stage, before losses are incurred. By enabling timely intervention rather than after-the-fact investigation, the system has been credited with helping prevent frauds worth over ₹1,800 crore, a scale that underscores how much of India’s cyber fraud economy now depends on the telecom layer rather than purely digital channels.
This complements existing public-facing tools under the DoT’s Sanchar Saathi platform, including TAFCOP, which lets citizens check how many mobile connections are registered in their name, and the Central Equipment Identity Register, which allows lost or stolen phones to be blocked across every network in the country using their IMEI number.
Andhra Pradesh’s Outsized Role
The Andhra Pradesh Licensed Service Area recorded particularly strong results during 2025-26, dismantling 11 illegal telecom and cybercrime setups over the year, operations targeting networks allegedly running illegal communication infrastructure and telecom fraud. The circle also recovered nearly 2.04 lakh lost and stolen mobile phones during the same period, the highest figure recorded by any DoT service area nationally, achieved through coordinated action between telecom operators, law enforcement and the CEIR system.
Alongside the conference, Khare inaugurated what the department described as its first Network Security Laboratory, based at the DoT’s Andhra Pradesh office in Hyderabad. The facility is intended to strengthen technical capacity for analysing telecom network vulnerabilities and supporting investigations into emerging telecom-based threats, effectively giving the department an in-house forensic capability rather than relying solely on operator-side data.
Why Experts Say the Fight Isn’t Over
Prof. Triveni Singh, a well-known cybercrime expert and former IPS officer, said organised cybercriminal networks rely heavily on fraudulently obtained mobile connections to run digital arrest scams, phishing operations, mule account networks, OTP fraud and identity theft. He described the disconnection of over five crore fake connections as a major disruption to the cybercrime ecosystem, but cautioned that sustained coordination among telecom operators, banks, law enforcement and technology platforms remains essential, since fraudsters routinely migrate to new channels once existing ones are shut down.
He added that advanced telecom analytics, AI-driven fraud detection, stricter KYC verification and real-time intelligence sharing between institutions will be crucial to keeping pace with an adversary that has repeatedly shown its ability to adapt to enforcement action, a dynamic that officials at the Hyderabad conference acknowledged means this crackdown is unlikely to be the department’s last.
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