Rapid Action Battalion (Rab-1) personnel recovered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) equipment worth about Tk 20 crore at Gulshan and Mohammadpur in the city during separate drives Monday night.

They also arrested two people for carrying out illegal VoIP business. The arrestees are Mohammad Abed Ali and Ziaur Rahman of Gulshan.

According to Rab-1 official sources, they recovered 1,070 Subscriber Identity Modules (SIMs) of different cellphone service operators, 32 Quintum Gateways, 150 Tellular telephone sets, 13 Channel Banks, seven Power Cards, three Ethernet Converters, two Ethernet Cards, two UPSs, two Ethernet switches and 20 vouchers of different banks.

Rab-1 sources said they conducted three separate drives and recovered the equipment at Niketon, Gulshan-1 and Salimullah Road in Mohammadpur.

Maj Saiful Islam of Rab-1 told The Daily Star, "The arrested people had been illegally running the VoIP business for several years."

He said they estimated the seized equipment are worth about Tk 20 crore.

In reply to a query, Saiful said, "Many of the seized 1,070 SIMs are disconnected due to non-registration. But most are activated and those SIMs were collected in cooperation with dealers of cellphone service operators.”

He said they would investigate how the culprits collected the large number of SIMs illegally.