Having arrested four persons, the police say these premium numbers for sex chats were given to the Delhi-based men by someone from abroad, with an instruction to make as many calls to these three numbers as possible. The police are yet to identify the suspect abroad, though senior officers say there’s little the Delhi Police can do to apprehend that person since sex chats are legal in most western nations.

In premium numbers, service providers share the revenue with subscribers, and call rates are higher.

In this case, the accused used forged documents to get six MTNL numbers with ISD facility and did not pay MTNL for the call made.

MTNL’s Nehru Place office approached the police just before Independence Day: ISD calls worth Rs 9 lakh were made from the six numbers and the bill was not paid.

“The accused connected the six numbers with computers and called on the three premium numbers,” an officer involved with the probe said.

The police found the six connections were taken in the name of a non-existent Ved Prakash Tripathi on forged documents and all the calls were made from an office in K-block, CR Park.

The police found the house locked when they reached there.

“Rs 4.5 lakh was later sent to the accused here (in Delhi) through transactions,” the officer said. He said the police are taking experts’ help to find out how the money was transferred.

Two men — Sudesh and Vicky — were arrested from the Capital region. Two others — Nitin and Mayank — were arrested from Allahabad later.

According to the officer, they confessed to the crime during interrogation.

Sudesh and Vicky, arrested from Gurgaon, were earlier employed with private telephone companies and knew how the system worked, according to the officer.