The Department of Telecom decided to block all calls made from grey market Chinese-manufactured handsets. Besides, the Govt. has instructed the mobile operators not to sell phones with fake IMEI (Fake phone ID) numbers.There is an estimated 1.6 crore Chinese handset owners in India.

The MD of Nokia India, Devinder Kishore explained, “The Department of Telecom has made this move after security agencies found that mobile phones used by terrorists in the recent blasts did not have valid IMEI numbers.”

A genuine IMEI number is registered with a GSM service provider and it facilitates blocking, monitoring and tracing. The terrorists use handsets without IMEI number or one with fake IMEI in order to avoid being caught.