Mumbai: The Yavatmal Police will be registering a fresh offence against Pune resident Ajinkya Nagargoje, who was arrested earlier this month in connection with the illegal Call Detail Records racket busted by the Thane Police Crime Branch.
The racket was exposed when the Crimen Branch’s Unit I arrested four private detectives on January 24 for allegedly buying illegally obtained CDRs from their sources and selling them to their clients. Mr. Nagargoje was arrested for allegedly hacking and using the official email account of the Superintendent of Police (SP), Yavatmal to obtain CDRs from cellular telephony firms. M. Rajkumar, SP, Yavatmal, said, “We have started an internal investigation to find out how Mr. Nagargoje obtained the password, and to what extent he used the email account.”
When Mr. Nagargoje was arrrested, the Thane Police had said he had obtained and sold 111 CDRs to private detectives, and Yavatmal Police are probing how he managed to obtain so many CDRs without setting off any alarms. Mr. Nagargoje is alleged to have clandestinely noted down the password for the email account while he was working on the Yavatmal Police's official website. “We suspect that he logged in to the account frequently, and deleted the email trails with cellular service providers as soon as he received the CDRs,” a Crime Branch officer said.
Sources said the email account will have to be examined by cyber experts to gauge the extent of misuse. Mr. Nagargoje is still in the custody of the Thane Police, who are interrogating him to find out how many private detectives he has supplied CDRs to. Mr. Rajkumar said, “While no fresh FIR has been registered, we have started working in that direction. We are waiting to get Mr. Nagargoje's custody, after which we will take action.”
Besides Mr. Nagargoje, police have also arrested city-based private detective Rajani Pandit and Jaspreet Singh, an employee with the private firm contracted by Vodafone for back office process. Mr. Singh is alleged to have illegally sold Subscriber Detail Records (SDRs) to private detectives.