Seven people were arrested on Tuesday night in connection with a fake call centre being run from a building in Dakshindari near Lake Town, police said.

This is the third call centre to be shut down by cops. Callers cheat people by promising them high returns for giving their plots or rooftops on rent to install mobile phone towers on their plots or rooftops against payment.

This call centre was known as “Advanced Solution” and it had been running for the past several months, an officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.

Their employees mostly men and women in their 20s used to call up people and promise them high returns for reactivating lapsed insurance policies against payment and for giving their rooftops or plots on rent for mobile phone towers, the officer said.

The cops raided the call centre after a Jagatpur resident who had been cheated lodged a complaint with Lake Town police station.

The police raided the call centre when its employees were at work and seized 40 SIM cards, smartphones and wireless phones, and hard disks.

Not only people in Bengal but also in Mizoram and Meghalaya had been targeted, the officer said.

“Callers would persuade people to pay a ‘registration fee’ and a ‘no-objection fee’ in the name of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India,” he said.

“People have become more aware about frauds involving insurance policies… so, now they are luring people by promising them high returns for installing mobile phone towers,” the officer said.