Hyderabad Police Arrest Key Accused in Massive Personal Data Theft Case
Hyderabad, April 1:
On April 2nd, Cyberabad Police in Hyderabad, India, arrested Vinay Bharadwaj, the primary suspect in a massive data theft case. The accused allegedly stole the personal information of 66.9 crore (669 million) individuals from 24 Indian states and put it up for sale on a website named ‘Inspire Web.’ The data belonged to people from 135 different categories, and included personal details such as name, father’s name, occupation, educational qualifications, e-mails, phone numbers, and residential addresses.
During the investigation, the police found that personal data of 56 lakh people from Hyderabad and data of 2.10 crore people from Andhra Pradesh were among the information for sale on the website. The police also disclosed that the data of students from educational institutes such as Baijus and Vedanta, as well as 1.84 lakh cab users from eight metro cities, and salary data of 4.5 lakh employees in six cities were also for sale.
The accused, Vinay Bharadwaj, was running a data center in Faridabad, Haryana, along with Amir Sohel and Madan Gopal. They allegedly collected the data from all social media platforms, third-party agencies, consultancies, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The accused sold the data to clients through cloud drive links after the data-selling deal was finalized.
Police have already arrested 15 people belonging to three gangs in Delhi, Noida, and Mumbai in connection with the case. Further arrests are expected as the investigation continues.
The accused are being charged with causing serious damage to national security and the public. The police have also urged the public to be vigilant and to report any instances of suspicious calls or messages.
The data theft case has once again highlighted the importance of data security and the need for stricter regulations to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.
