The Cyber Crime Investigation Cell (CCIC) of city crime branch arrested two people for allegedly deleting data from the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) server to get the exam postponed, thereby facilitating coaching classes and students. One was arrested on Tuesday and the other at 2.30am on Wednesday.
Crime branch officials said MPSC had lodged a complaint with the CCIC on July 6 about the deletion of data of candidates who were to appear for the preliminary exam of state service on April 7 this year.
A CCIC officer said, “Sakinaka-based VAST India Private Limited was providing online application services to MPSC from May 2010 to May 2013. The services included receiving online application forms of the candidates and online provision of call letters for interview.”
He added that on March 30 MPSC started receiving complaints from candidates about its server not working properly.
“MPSC then contacted Vivek Chandel, the company’s director. Chandel had informed MPSC that a virus attack on its database had resulted in the slowdown of the server and some of the information had gotten deleted or corrupted,” the officer said.
The company tried to recover the database via various methods but failed. “In the meantime, coaching classes and other agencies started pressurising MPSC to postpone its April 7 exam for six months. The commission was forced to do so.
After some time, it learnt that not just the candidates’ data but the entire data of MPSC had been deleted by VAST India,” the officer said.
On Tuesday, the police searched the company’s office and seized eight hard disks, including three server hard disks and one nash box (special storage device), some evidential valued documents and registers. Chandel was arrested on Tuesday and company’s senior IT official Virendra Asolkar on Wednesday.
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