"The department of telecom has taken up the matter (of illegal routing of international calls from MTNL's subsidiary in Nepal United Telecom Ltd) to monitor these illegal calls.
UTL has already taken up the issue with ministry of IT and telecom and Nepal's telecom authorities," IT and Telecom Minister Shakeel Ahmad told the Lok Sabha.
He said some operators were generating decoy international calls from India and MTNL has been asked to identify such illegal set-ups in Nepal.
Between 1998 and 2004, 204 cases of illegal routing of international calls have come to light and the government has lost Rs 350 crore (Rs 3.5 billion) due to the malpractice, Ahmad said.
He said that to check illegal routing of international calls, directions were issued last month to all telecom operators to handle telecom traffic strictly as per provisions of interconnection regulation as issued by the telecom regulatory authority of India.
Apart from this, vigilance telecom monitoring cells have been set up in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai to monitor grey market operations, he said.
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