Dhaka: State Minister for Post and Telecommunications Tarana Halim on Tuesday said crimes using mobile phones have gone down after the SIMs re-registration under the biometric method but they have got complaints of spoofing calls through computer software.

‘Some criminals are demanding extortions from famous people over mobile phone by making copy the mobile numbers of different people through the spoofing software in computer and are threatening them,’ she said at a press briefing at the ministry.

There is no relation between the spoofing calls and the re-registration of SIM under biometric method, she said.

The junior minister said ‘if you get such calls, you will call back the same number and realize about the real subscriber of the number,’ adding that she also requested people not to send money to the criminals after getting these kinds of calls.

Tarana said the law enforcing agencies informed to the ministry that they are getting benefit from the biometric SIM registration system.

The killer of Suraiya Akter Risha, a Class VIII student at Willes Little Flower School in Dhaka, was arrested easily due to the SIM registrations, said the state minister.

She said the numbers of illegal VOIP were 35 percent but it has been reduced to 10 percent after the biometric registration.

Tarana said nearly 11.40 crore mobile users have registered their SIM under the biometric system where there was only 0.5 percent faults among the registered SIMs.

Posts and Telecommunications Secretary Faizur Rahman and Chairman of Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulator Commission (BTRC) Shahjahan Mahmud, among others, were present at the briefing.