Blowing the cover of private eyes

The Thane crime branch recently busted a ring of private eyes, hackers, policemen and telecom officials profiteering from selling personal or call records of unsuspecting citizens who for all practical purposes were spied upon.

The matter, which has come to be called the CDR (call detail records) case, has floodlit how privacy is invaded and traded for a wad of notes in the Information Age.

The bust came following a tip-off in January that some detectives were involved in trading CDRs, and in the process walking all over a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court recently in an August 2017 judgment.

Acting on the information, sleuths from unit I of the Thane crime branch sent an agent provocateur to bait the first accused, Makesh Pandian of Globe detective agency in Vashi, who fell for the trap and was caught red-handed delivering the requested CDR in Kalwa on January 24.

Three more arrests followed that day, of Pandian’s colleagues Samaresh Jha, Prashant Palekar and Jigar Makwana. All private detectives at Globe, they were taken into custody on the charge of selling personal data to their clientele, which included dabblers in corporate espionage, suspicious spouses eager to strengthen a divorce case, and insurance surveyors itching to wriggle out of a payout.

A raid at Globe’s office yielded a cache of 171 CDRs stored on laptops and computers recovered from the agency, said senior police inspector Nitin Thakare, of unit I of Thane crime branch. The CDRs were sold for as high as Rs 1 lakh, depending on the client’s financial stature, he added.

While quizzing them, the cops learnt that the CDRs were sourced from a man named Saurabh Sahu in Delhi, the architect  of the racket who has so far eluded the cops, and detectives in an around Mumbai. The interrogation also disclosed the involvement of Rajani Pandit, said to be India’s first woman, who they said had bought five CDRs from them for Rs 12,000 each. She was promptly arrested and is now in judicial custody.

This is where the real work began. The cops reasoned that a lay detective is unlikely to have the resources needed to extract CDR on their own. And consindering that only an officer of the rank of superintendent of police (SP) or deputy commissioner of police (DCP) can order a telecom service provider to furnish details, the cops dug deeper.

A fork in the probe led the cops to Yavatmal, to a cyber wizard by the name of Ajinkya Nagargoje, who created and handled the Yavatmal police’s website; and to Pune, to a telecom executive Jaspreet Singh Marwah. It was learnt that Nagargoje had provided 111 CDRs to Makwana, and Marwah had supplied 38 SDRs (subscription data registry, which are details a customer submits while registering a number) to Globe detectives.

Nagargoje, the investigators said, had installed spyware on the Yavatmal SP’s computer. “He knew the SP’s password and used it to send emails to telecom companies, asking them to provide CDRs of certain individuals in his jurisdiction,” said a Crime Branch sleuth. Marwah, on the other hand, worked in the back office of a telecom company, and thus had easy access to clients’ SDRs.

The two were arrested.

On Thursday, in a significant development, the Thane Crime Branch also arrested a constable from Yavatmal police for allegedly supplying CDRs to Nagargoje before he took up the police website gig.

A little help from ‘friends’

It wasn’t until the cops talked to Mumbai-based detective Kirtesh Kavi, a police informant, that the role of some police officials was exposed. “It was Kavi who had helped Globe’s Makwana and Palekar to get some CDRs for their clients,” said Senior Inspector Thakare. “His proximity to cops helped him obtain CDRs, which he supplied to other detectives.”

While the racket came a full circle here, the police understand that the arrested people only form arcs in the 360-degree crime portrait. “Many more are involved. We are going to arrest some police officials in the case soon,” Thakare said.

Even so, the police are restive. Arrests do not insure the future against similar crimes, nor deter the same offenders from getting back to the playing field, especially since there is no law that regulates the working of detective agencies, which are known to push the lines to serve a well-paying client.

So far, the 11 people arrested in the case have been booked under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and under the Information Technology Act, 2000.

“There is no licensing body to disqualify people like Kavi who are caught violating the law. Even if they are caught, they will manage to get away and continue doing their job,” said DCP Abhishek Trimukhe, Zone I, Thane.

In defence of the detectives, one-time cop YP Singh said they help cops check crime. “Detectives should be encouraged as long as they function within the regulatory framework,” said Singh, without elaborating which framework.

“They bring information which at times the cops cannot access,” he said.

Investigations into the CDR racket have also thrown up the names of some B-town celebrities who had availed of the services of the arrested detectives, the police said on Thursday. 

“Our probe has revealed that some Bollywood personalities  also employed the arrested detectives. When we get evidence, we will call them for questioning. We also have information that Some VIPs have used their service, but I would not like to comment about the case as the investigation is still on,” said Thane Commissioner of Police Parambir Singh. 

A police source claimed that the tinsel-town personages had sought information owing to some matrimonial issues, or about some “other” parties altogether. “Apart from this, insurance companies hired the detectives for claims-related inquiries. Some businessmen also sought their services to settle business rivalries,” the source said.

—Gajanan Nirphale

Old Hands

• Two accused, Saurabh Sahu and Kirtesh Kavi, are not new to this trouble. After their names cropped up in a similar racket in Mumbai in 2017, Sahu was arrested but got out on bail. He had contacted Kavi and asked him if he needed “help” with detective work. Cops said Kavi would buy CDRs from Sahu for Rs 15,000 a piece. 
• Cops suspect Sahu likewise approached other detectives to sell them CDRs.