In May 2016, Bhangale had presented these documents and emails to claim that calls were placed to Khadse's mobile phone number from a landline number in Karachi registered in Mehjabeen's name.
Ten months after 'ethical' hacker Manish Bhangale made public emails and documents purportedly exchanged between Dawood Ibrahim's wife Mehjabeen and Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL) to allege a link between Bharatiya Janata Party leader Eknath Khadse and Dawood, the Cyber Crime Police in Mumbai on Friday arrested Bhangale for allegedly fabricating the emails and documents to defame the former state minister.
In May 2016, Bhangale had presented these documents and emails to claim that calls were placed to Khadse's mobile phone number from a landline number in Karachi registered in Mehjabeen's name. He had claimed that he had accessed call records of Dawood's landline phone in Karachi by hacking the authentication process of PTCL in April.
Besides other documents produced by Bhangalde at the time, there were call logs of alleged calls between Mehjabeen's landline number and Khadse's mobile phone between January 15 and March 15. Bhangale had claimed that during this period, Khadse had received seven calls from Mehjabeen's landline number in Pakistan. He had further claimed that between September 5, 2015 and April 5, 2016, apart from Khadse, four other influential persons in India had spoken to Dawood.
"Bhangale had earlier claimed to have posed as Dawood's wife Mehjabeen and contacted PTCL to get the bills of her landline phone and its call detail records. However, our probe revealed that these documents were forged with the intention to defame Khadse. Also, when we checked call detail records of Khadse' number cited in the PTCL documents, we found that he had not received any call from the Karachi number as mentioned in Bhangale's documents," said a Cyber Crime Police officer.
The police suspect that Bhangale had spoofed PTCL's email in order to make his claims appear authentic. "We are also probing whether Mehjabeen's email ID was fake, and hence we have also seized his two mobile phones and a laptop," the officer said.
The police have now registered a case against Bhangale, and have booked him under IPC sections for forgery and cheating, as well as a few sections of the IT Act.
Bhangale was produced in court on Friday afternoon, where he claimed, "I was cooperating all along and turned up whenever I was called for an inquiry. I even gave a demo on how I acquired all these details, but the police have some confusion. Hence they assume that I fabricated these documents.”
In June 2016, Bhangale had filed a petition in the Bombay High Court, asking for a CBI probe against Khadse. He also asked for police protection, saying he was receiving death threats. In the petition, Bhangale said he had even tried to get in touch with the Prime Minister’s Office and the office of National Security Advisor.
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