Kolkata: State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) busted five call centres which were running illegally and were accused of duping huge number of people in UK, USA, Australia and Canada and India. The information about the locations of the call centres was provided by Microsoft along with a letter of complaint on Tuesday. Earlier, Kolkata Police had busted two such call centres which were duping UK residents. After busting the rackets, almost 26,000 cases lodged in UK police were solved. According to sources, on Tuesday, a lawyer of Microsoft in India lodged a complaint with CID and informed that several call centres are being run from Salt Lake which are duping the citizens of various countries. Microsoft had traced the call centres and found they operated from Salt Lake. After the complaint was lodged, CID started a case against call centres and constituted multiple teams for raid. On Tuesday night, raids were conducted at five call centres. One call centre was located at AA block in Salt Lake while the other four were located in Sector V. On Wednesday, Deputy Inspector General (DIG), CID (Special) Mitesh Jain informed that the accused persons used to dupe foreign residents by saying that were associated with Microsoft Corporations and offered technical support. Accused persons used to send a pop up message to the computers mentioning that there was some technical snag in the system. When a user clicks on the pop up message to see what the technical error was there, the screen used to get freeze. After that a phone number used to appear on the screen where the users were asked to call for technical support. When a user called them, accused persons used to demand money to unfreeze the computer. According to CID, the call centres were being operated at night. Around 25 people used work in each of the call centres. On Tuesday night, after conducting the raid, seven persons were arrested from the call centres, who were the masterminds. Though the employees of these call centres were not arrested, but police have instructed them not to leave the city as they are also the part of the crime. "So far, we have arrested seven persons and seized servers, hard disks, pen drives and several incriminating documents. Probe is on. At present, investigation is at an early stage," said Jain. Earlier, Kolkata Police had busted two fake call centres which were being used to dupe UK and USA citizens. During October, seven persons were arrested and several hard disks, and other incriminating documents were seized from the call centres, which were located in Kasba and Topsia.

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