Kochi | Kerala police on Friday began an investigation into a complaint filed by AICC general secretary K C Venugopal which said that hackers had illegally cloned his mobile number and made fraudulent calls with ulterior motives. Venugopal had on Wednesday posted a copy of his complaint on Twitter, saying hackers were using caller ID spoofing to make spam calls from his cloned phone number.

In his complaint filed with the state police chief, the senior Congress leader referred to instances where two persons allegedly received such illegal phone calls. The DGP then forwarded the complaint to the Kochi city police commissioner.

Kochi City Police Commissioner K Sethu Raman told PTI that the district cyber cell had begun a probe based on Venugopal's complaint.

He said it was possible for hackers use certain applications to clone one's phone and engage in fraudulent activities.

Venugopal has alleged that persons unknown to him had been contacting certain individuals from cloned SIM cards impersonating himself or someone from his staff "for ulterior motives and/or duping individuals of their money." "It is absolutely necessary that appropriate legal proceedings, including criminal investigation under the prevailing laws, are initiated forthwith against the said unidentified persons so that they are unable to cause any harm," he said.