Cyber cops yet to recover crucial call centre data

As part of its ongoing probe into the Mira Road call centre racket, in which the accused placed phone calls to US citizens posing as Internal Revenue Services officials and extorted money from them to ignore purported tax irregularities, Thane Police's cyber wing and independent cyber experts are trying to retrieve crucial data that was deleted at three call centres shortly before raids were conducted by the police.

On Friday, the Thane police filed an exhaustive 5,786 page charge sheet in the case, with some of the accused charged with destruction of evidence among other charges.

Jagdish Kanani alias JK, a Borivali resident who ran two call centres in Mumbai's distant suburbs and one in Ahmedabad allegedly destroyed important data that could be used as evidence by the Thane Police.

The Thane police had raided three call centres in the jurisdiction of Kashimira and Nayanagar police stations. At a call centre in Nayanagar, the operators shut down business, deleted data and absconded at least 20 minutes before the police raided the place.

"We have mentioned about the accused who deleted the data, that amounts to destruction of evidence under the Indian Penal Code, and the accused involved will be arrested", said a Thane Crime Branch police official.

DCP Parag Manere, Thane Crime Branch said, "We have also charged the accused under IPC section 201(destruction of evidence) and we have cyber experts who are retrieving the data from the hard disks and computers which have been seized."