ASTR AI: How India’s Indigenous Tool is Cracking Down on Fraudulent SIM Cards

In response to rising cybercrime, the Department of Telecommunications is actively working to curb the misuse of telecom resources. The Ministry of Home Affairs oversees matters related to cybercrime and has established the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) to provide a framework and ecosystem for law enforcement agencies. To facilitate public reporting of cybercrimes, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) (https://cybercrime.gov.in) has been launched. The number of complaints registered on NCRP in 2022, 2023, and 2024 were 10.29 lakh, 15.96 lakh, and 22.68 lakh, respectively. The Department of Telecommunications has developed ASTR, an indigenous AI and Big Data analytics tool, to identify mobile connections registered under different names by the same individual. ASTR’s failure to re-verify these connections led to the disconnection of over 8.2 million such connections.