The Chandigarh Police claim to have smashed an indigenous module of an international gang of hackers and cheats with the arrest of three youths “in the act of hacking†from a city hotel on Wednesday. A laptop and four mobiles were recovered from them.
A case under section 66, 66C, 66D IT Act & 420, 379, 120-B IPC was registered against all three accused – Ankur Sharma, a resident of Badarpur, New Delhi, Rajesh Sharma, who hails from Zirakpur, near Chandigarh, and Pawan Singh, a resident of Ghaziabad and the youngest of the lot at 23 – and were remanded to police custody for 10 days for interrogation.
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Deputy Inspector General of Police Alok Kumar told a news conference that the modus operandi of the module, which appears to have been active for the past 4-5 years, was that they used to approach commercial undertakings, most of them in foreign lands, through their websites promising to boost their business for a commission and then get payments forwarded to them from hacked credit and debit cards from across the country and abroad.
The Cyber Cell of the Chandigarh Police is claimed to have been working on creditable information on the module for the last two months. On getting a tip off that the gang was in Chandigarh, Cyber Cell incharge, Inspector Harinder Singh along with his team and an IT expert, Rajesh Rana, raided a hotel in Sector-35, where all three accused were caught red-handed executing live transactions. A laptop and four mobile phones were seized. “Very important data has been procured from these devices, which can lead to some more arrests and can unearth big nexus. Further investigation is in progress,” said a press release circulated at the news conference.
The police officials while claiming that at this stage it would be difficult to ascertain the extent of cheating, the very fact that the module had been operating with the help of possible mentors and guides in foreign lands for the past four to five years, could be indication enough that the extent could be limitless. There was also reasonable suspicion to believe that the network could be linked to hawala trade and that the money could have been used for funding anti-national activities, the officials added, saying further investigations would help unravel the deep roots.
The officials cautioned the credit and debit card users to ascertain the authenticity of the websites they visit before making any online payments to prevent chances of these being hacked and misused.
