SRINAGAR, APRIL 2 Rattled by the discovery that militants had obtained cellphone SIM cards by faking identities of securitymen, telecom companies have temporarily barred services of over 10,000 subscribers in Kashmir and launched a massive re-verification exercise.

Confirming that subscriber antecedents were being verified again, a senior Airtel official told The Indian Express: “We have temporally barred over 7,000 SIM cards issued to securitymen across Kashmir. During our investigations, we found that identities and other details provided by several subscribers were not correct.”

Private service providers and the BSNL had been instructed by the Department of Telecom to re-verify identities of subscribers before March 31.

As first reported by The Indian Express, checks on a SIM card found in Baramulla after a roadside blast in December and the seizure of mobile phones from militants revealed that identities of securitymen were being faked to get hold of pre-paid cards.

“After the DoT directions, we carried out massive re-verification. We sent text messages and then called each subscriber, especially those with pre-paid cards,” the Airtel official said. Earlier, BSNL Deputy General Manager Siddharth Pokharna told The Indian Express: “We are in the process of re-verifying antecedents of around 4 lakh customers in the Valley on a directive from BSNL headquarters.” Pokharna pointed out that when cellphone services were introduced in the Valley in 2003, “there was a lot of public pressure for mobile phones... We are conducting re-verification, the problem is mostly in the pre-paid sector.”