Top-up cards of Nepal Telecom (NT) worth Rs2 million—20,000 units worth Rs100 each—have gone missing while being imported from India, the state-run telecom service provider said on Saturday.

Spokesperson Prativa Baidhya said NT became aware of the incident only after the consignment reached the Birgunj customs point.

Following the incident, NT’s wireless service directorate has issued a public notice urging consumers not to sell or purchase 100-rupee recharge cards bearing serial numbers 111 61000 816 00001 to 1116 10008 162 0000.

“We have already deactivated these 20,000 recharge cards,” Baidhya said, adding the notice was issued to make buyers as well as sellers aware.

NT has already reported the incident to the Indian manufacturer and the shipping company.

NT will first enquire about the incident with them, and if it finds their response unsatisfactory, it said it will lodge a police complaint.

The consignment—Rs20 million in total—also had recharge cards of higher denominations, but only the box containing 100-rupee cards was found missing.

NT said it is the first such case. “There were incidents of a few cards missing in the past. But it is first such big case,” Baidhya said.

The latest MIS (Management Information System) report of Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has positioned Nepal Telecom as the biggest telecom service provider, with 48 percent market share in terms of the number of SIM-card holders.

The state-run telecom service provider has 13,536,114 subscribers of GSM mobile phone service, and 1,456,790 CDMA service users.