From Anjali Sharma
NEW DELHI- Indian authorities are reported to have arrested a suspect in connection with illegal tapping of the phone calls of certain politicians, top civil and military bureaucrats and businessmen and also hacking various phone and internet accounts through state of the art hacking techs, here on Monday.
Well placed sources, on conditions of anonymity, told this scribe that a team of Intelligence Bureau(IB) and local police conducted a raid at the residence in the Shanti Niketan area of the city around 4 AM on Monday and arrested a young boy in his early 30s in connection with ongoing probe into the audio tapes, released by US-based Indian individual, Avi Dandya. These sources say that cyber wing of Delhi Police and Intelligence Bureau (IB) were tasked from the office of National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval to launch an immediate probe to track down as to what was the source of Avi Dandya’s released audio tapes. The Investigators, the sources claim, track down a drop out of Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), belonging to a fairly rich family. The suspect, named Kapil, is reported to be devil genius in IT and was rusticated from IITD due to his negative approach and particularly after he hacked various mobile phones and internet accounts of many fellow students and faculty members and even that of the head of the Institute. The local police had a few random complaints about the suspect, using certain hacked data of certain individuals for blackmailing them. However, as per traditional lethargic approach of the Indian police, these complaints were not addressed properly and the suspect’s family influence also played a significant role. The sources further informed that even though the suspect belonged to a well-off family, his hacking instinct and lust for more and more finances kept digging him deep in the menace. According to some police officials, the suspect also developed some connection with the underworld and also hacked many databases for them. The sources say that a couple of years back, the suspect started hacking the phone accounts, email accounts and social media accounts of certain top businessmen, industrialists, politicians and civil and military bureaucrats while websites of certain ministries were also not spared. However, no probe was ever initiated or ordered in this direction until Avi Dandya came up with some incredible audio tapes. The sources say the while tracking Avi Dandya’c contacts in India, the investigators got a lead to the suspect and after some preliminary monitoring of suspect’s movement, it was decided to finally turn him in for further interrogation. The sources further informed that the suspect is currently in custody of IB where he has admitted for tapping the phone calls, hacking the internet accounts and sneaking into private e-mail accounts of different politicians, industrialists and top civil and military bureaucrats and selling the hacked and tapped material to different parties across the world and Avi Dandya was one of them. He had , in the preliminary investigations, admitted to the interrogators that he started this process in bid to blackmail a corrupt bureaucrat who was creating serious problems for his family’s company and was extorting a lot of money from his family. Once he hacked the data of that bureaucrat and started blackmailing him, he stopped bothering his family and instead started giving him money on regular basis which encouraged him to proceed further in this direction.
It is learnt that the authorities are probing what sort of data has he been hacking and selling it to which parties, keeping the matter as top secret and no official statement is being made over the arrest. However a few residents of the area confirmed the raid on suspect’s residence and described the suspect as being a very arrogant and spoilt youngster and a constant trouble maker, disliked by everyone, including his family members and especially by his siblings.
