The West Bengal Police on Friday raided six unauthorised private radio stations operating on Prasar Bharati frequencies in various pockets of South 24 Parganas, following a tip-off from amateur radio operators.

“We raided and dismantled six radio stations and arrested four youths who had been running them for some time,” said SP (South 24 Parganas) Praveen Kumar. The stations had been operating under names like Nagraj Betar Kendra, Ma Bishalakkhi and Ma Kali Asthayi Betar Kendra. A large number of music CDs, DVDs and microphones as well as six radio transmitters were seized from these offices. Anukul Shaw, Shanatan Jana, Srikanta Pramanik and Gaur Chandra Maity, who have been arrested, are all in their twenties.

A year back, amateur HAM radio operators had warned the monitoring station at Gopalpur in South 24 Parganas about the unauthorised radio stations. The monitoring station is under the jurisdiction of the Wireless Planning and Co-ordination of Department of Communications, GoI. Though a formal complaint was lodged with the police last year, it had been difficult to locate the base stations. The makeshift stations were operating on local made transmitters. The operators in Sagar were making money by airing local ads. The unauthorised radio broadcasts often suppress Prasar Bharati signals as the transmitters are quite powerful within a radius of five to seven km.