I have a Airtel postpaid connection numbered : 7387411122. I have been using this number for several months now and have no outstanding payments on the phone. Today (2nd November 2013), I was sending SMS’ed and suddenly the phone stopped working. I waited to check if the service disruption was transient and after half an hour, called my own number from another mobile. To my horror, someone took the phone and informed me that he has been using the number for a year and a half !

As soon as I heard this, I called up Airtel customer support, spent some 50 minutes, explaining the problem and after a lot of convincing, got them to stop services to my number. They gave me a complaint number (53606489). They also confirmed that they had issued a duplicate SIM the same day (2nd November 2013) and did not quite believe me when I told them that I had never requested for a duplicate SIM.

I work from home and use this number very frequently every day. I am now not sure how I can work from my home in Pune as my company is in Bangalore. Worse, Airtel folks are not even interested in telling me how to solve this mess. Also, who happens if my number has been misused for illegal activities ? Shoud I file a police complaint ?

Regards,
Kedar