Jinxed cellphone number suspended after three users die in 10 years

London, May 26 (ANI): A Bulgarian mobile operator has dumped a number after three of its users died within a decade.

The first owner of the number 0888 888 888, Vladimir Grashnov, former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel which issued it, died of cancer in 2001 aged 48.

His death sparked off rumours that a business rival had used radioactive poisoning to kill him.

The number then passed to Bulgarian mafia boss, Konstantin Dimitrov, who was shot death by an assassin in 2003 in the Netherlands.

Dimitrov, aged 31 at the time, was carrying the mobile with him when he was shot dead while eating out with a model.

Russian mafia bosses were rumoured to have been behind his killing.

Thereafter, Konstantin Dishliev, a crooked businessman, used the phone number before he was gunned down outside an Indian restaurant in Bulgaria's capital Sofia.

Dishliev, an estate agent, was covertly running a cocaine trafficking operation before he was assassinated in 2005.

The number has not been in use since then.

And phone bosses have now decided to suspend it for good.

Callers now get a recorded message saying the phone is "outside network coverage," reports the Telegraph.

A Mobitel spokesman said: "We have no comment to make. We won't discuss individual numbers." (ANI)