Student held for ‘hacking’ Airtel website

NEW DELHI: The Special Cell of Delhi police on Tuesday held a 28-year-old man for allegedly hacking into the website of telecom service provider Airtel and obtaining call details of 26 central government employees including some high-ranking officials.

Among those whose call details were obtained are senior police officers and bureaucrats. According to the police, the accused tried to get call details of 59 officials. He finally got  details of 26 officials and demanded Rs1 crore from the company for not disclosing it.

Ankit Srivastava, 29, a PhD student, was arrested on Tuesday from his Gaziabad residence and produced before a city court which remanded him to seven days of police custody. According to the police, Ankit lived with his brother, a HCL employee, at his Gaziabad home. His father is a senior government employee in Uttar Pradesh.

On his part, Ankit alleged that Airtel’s complaint against him was a ‘counter move’, after he had lodged an FIR against the company with Senior Superintendent of Police Ghaziabad on June 21 claiming that the company’s system and the data of its subscribers’, was not ‘safe’. The special cell sleuths investigating the case are tightlipped. The modus operandi of the accused or his motive is also not clear.