In case of Manish Bisi, a young man in Madagaon village in Gariaband district of Chhattisgarh, his purchase of a very basic SIM card in a small local phone shop triggered a series of events he never would have anticipated. In a matter of days he was receiving phone calls by cricket superstars, taking an ordinary thing and making it into something extraordinary.
SIM card belonging to Rajat Patidar
This SIM card had a bizarre back story it used to belong to up and coming cricketing star Rajat Patidar. When Manish and his friend Khemraj turned on WhatsApp, they viewed the profile photo of Patidar. They believed it to be some sort of a glitch but soon after, they could hear certain voices such as those of Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers.
Manish, whose father is a farmer, Gajendra Bisi, purchased the new Jio SIM on June 28 in one of the shops in Deobhog located about 8 kilometres away. On the ensuing days, calls continued to be received by other popular cricketers but the two friends thought it was an elaborate joke by some people they knew.
They went as far as to act in on the alleged prank, which Khemraj later told. It was all different on July 15 when Patidar himself called: brother, please give me back my SIM. The two continued with doubts of a joke until Patidar stated that he was going to involve the police to settle the score.
Police step in to settle the SIM card confusion
A few minutes later a team of police officers came, and it turned out that this was not a joke. As Gariaband Deputy Superintendent of Police Neha Sinha clarified, the SIM was taken off the hands of the actual subscriber after 90 days of inactivity and Manish had been made its fortunate owner by sheer chance.
She said, “Manish was actually getting calls from cricketers who were in contact with Rajat Patidar. Patidar informed the Madhya Pradesh Cyber Cell that his number had been allotted to someone else and requested to have it back.” With the family’s consent, the SIM was returned to Patidar.
In his statements, Sinha said that there was no malpractice involved by any individual, rather this was just the normal telecom procedure.
A once-in-a-lifetime cricket fan moment
To Manish and Khemraj, the whole event was like it was out of a movie. Khemraj is a fan of Kohli and he told TV he never thought one day he would talk to Virat Kohli and that too at our village. When AB de Villiers dialed he was speaking in English, and we could not get a word quality whatsoever.”
He further said that each time Manish received such calls, he would give him the phone. Virat Kohli and Yash Dayal questioned us as to why we used the number of Patidar. We even told him that we had purchased new SIM and it belonged to us.”
Villagers share the excitement
It was not only a special event to the couple of friends. According to Manish brother Deshbandhu Bisi the whole village was excited, in particular many of them are RCB fans. They were chats of pure chance even had there been a mistake. They are people people just dream of seeing, we talked to them,” he said.
This SIM card tale is now the stuff of legend in one small village of Chhattisgarh- evidence that the right people are sometimes found on the wrong end of the line.
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