PUNE: A multi-agency probe into illegal telephone exchanges unearthed over the past four months in Latur and Mumbai revealed Pakistan-based handlers were using them for gathering intelligence inputs about military establishments in different parts of the state and country.A senior army officer privy to the details of the probe being done in coordination with the Maharashtra antiterrorism squad (ATS) and the military intelligence, told TOI, “These exchanges have facilitated Pakistan ’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to establish contact either with their undercover informers in India or to target the lower rank armed forces personnel for gathering information in the past two years.”He said, “Earlier, whenever an ISI operative would call on an Indian number, the caller’s number would flash on the receiver’s mobile handset screen as starting with a +92 digits followed by three digits. It was easy to identify where the caller was operating from and intelligence gathering was difficult. But now the ISI operatives are using illegal telephone exchanges for contacting their informers based in India. This also marks a shift in their intel gathering methods.”Referring to difficulties in tracing calls from across the border, a senior ATS officer said, “All international calls come through Mumbai or Delhi gateways. If we want to trace a particular call, we can get information through the gateway scan in which we can verify where the caller has established contact in India. With illegal telephone exchanges, it is difficult for the agencies to trace the call. Local telephone operators connect these international calls to Indian numbers via routers and computers. These calls don’t reflect as international calls on the receiver’s mobile. Therefore, the receiver does not know where the call has originated from.”Army sources claimed that at times the ISI operatives roped in women callers. “Such callers have managed to honey trap people, including the lower rank army personnel in the past,” said a source. The investigators are now maintaining a greater vigilance on illegal telephone exchange activities in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.“Initially, these exchanges were unearthed in the border districts of Rajasthan, wherein the local operators used dual SIM cards (Pakistani and India). These operators would switch to a Pakistani SIM, thereby earning illegal money and causing losses to the Department of Telecom (DoT),” an army officer, who investigated such cases then, told TOI.Statistics available with the DoT shows the Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring (TERM) cell, a statutory body of the DoT for curbing illegal exchanges, unearthed at least 22 illegal telephone exchanges between January 2016 and February this year in different parts of the country.Apart from Latur, the ATS In Maharashtra busted an illegal telephone exchange in Bhiwandi in June. The ATS then recovered over 110 SIM cards, computers and some sophisticated gadgets from the suspects. Investigations revealed that maximum international calls originated from Pakistan and the west Asian countries.State ATS chief Atulchandra Kulkarni told TOI over phone, “We have established that calls were made mostly from the west Asian countries. We are establishing further links in these cases.”