Mumbai: In yet another case of technology being misused, Airtel was conned of around Rs 30 lakh by two of its employees.

Junior engineer Pankaj Gupta and retention executive Chandrakant Sarolia have been arrested for activating deactivated SIM cards and selling them illegally.

The scam started around December last year when Gupta downloaded the company's software, which is used to activate SIM cards, into his pen drive. He then installed the software at shops that sold Airtel cards and provided them with khacha cards. Khacha cards are deactivated SIM cards, according to the Airtel system. Using the stolen software, shop owners would activate the khacha cards and sell them to customers. Since there wouldn't be any bills on such cards, the cost of the thousands of phone calls made using them had to be borne by Airtel.

Police say the people who bought these cards obviously knew they were doing illegal business, as they bought them for between Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 each. "There will be at least 150-200 people using such cards," said JCP (crime) Rakesh Maria. 

An Airtel spokesperson added, "Due to our stringent systems, we identified a fraud and immediately reported it to the cyber crime cell."