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Cops seek caller ID at phone booths to combat extortion

Shariful Islam
The Police Headquarters last week applied to the post and telecommunications ministry to provide caller identification (ID) for card phone booths and commercial fixed phones in Dhaka to clamp down on extortionists.
The move came in the wake of police finds that most gangs demand tolls and ransom making calls from private and card phone booths, a top police official said.
Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) receives nearly a dozen of such complaints a day and many calls go unreported as people pay tolls rather than informing the police for fear of gang violence, he said.
"If caller ID is available, it will help us greatly to track down the gangs," said the official, requesting anonymity.
Chairman of Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) ATM Badrul Hoque told The Daily Star on Tuesday that the fixed phone line provider took measures for caller ID to all recently provided telephones.
"We sought quotation for caller ID to the lines currently lacking the facility, but none responded," he said, adding Tk 40 crore was needed for the conversion.
Of the more than 6.5 lakh fixed phones in Dhaka, about two lakh have the caller ID facility, the BTTB sources said.
The DMP official said mobile phones have the technology to locate the callers from any place. But the BTTB should use the software that can detect the callers' voice and help police trace the gangsters.
Most gangs operating for extortion and ransom threaten their targets with death or abduction if their demands go unmet or they go to the police.
Sometimes, they even threaten to spray corrosive acids.
Police nabbed 75 operatives when they were collecting tolls introducing themselves as the accomplices of listed criminals Kala Jahangir, Subrata Bain and Pichchi Hannan.
Officials of different UN bodies, business persons, senior government officials, private company executives, physicians, engineers and other well-off people are the prime targets of the gangs, police sources said.
They gather telephone directories and guides to list the people they want to victimise.
A police official said these criminals first demand a huge amount of money and in most cases settle for anything between Tk 5,000 and Tk 10,000.
On August 20, a computer firm in Dhanmondi became the victim of such a gang the operatives of which identified themselves as members of the Kala Jahangir group. The gang safely collected the money from the footbridge in front of Shyamoli Cinema on the day.
The next day, police arrested four gangsters from Shyamoli, but could not say whether they were behind the computer firm extortion.
Another gang extorted Tk 1 lakh from a computer firm at Farmgate in the second week of August. A week later, the firm received another call for money, this time the caller identified himself as a member of Pichchi Hannan group.
On May 27, officials and employees of an insurance company caught a youth when he went to their office to collect Tk 50,000. A man identifying himself as Kala Jahangir called the managing director of the company for the amount.
In another incident in May, a youth telephoned an official of the Bangladesh Shilpa Bank and demanded Tk 50,000 from him. The caller warned him of grave consequences if he did not pay the money.
"We could have made headway in all such incidents if the caller ID was available," the DMP official said.