CDR case: Cops claim private detective tried to delete evidence from laptop, mobile

THANE: Private detective Kirtesh Kavi, arrested for illegally sourcing call data records (CDR), is said to have made a futile attempt to outsmart the police and delete all mails which are believed to be strong evidence of his unlawful activities.
Kavi, who is in police custody, along with four others— including lady detective Rajani Pandit—is said to have instructed his staffers to erase all his mails by trying to secure a new SIM card for his mobile number, the police informed the court on Tuesday.

Investigators urged the judicial magistrate court to extend Kavi’s police custody as some of his employees had approached the mobile service provider to issue another SIM for Kavi, claiming that the older SIM was lost or misplaced.

“Being a privileged customer, the service provider issued a new SIM after which they tried to activate the mobile, which is now in police custody. The idea was to get the one time password (OTP) and erase all the data that the police had accessed. Incidentally, the nodal officer of the SIM company had already received a request from the crime branch seeking his CDR. Sensing something was amiss, he suspended the newly issued SIM,” senior inspector Nitin Thakre told the court.

“He tried to play all the possible tricks even though he was in police custody. This did not deter him to try to wipe out all the data. He has advanced softwares in his laptops, which he used to analyze the CDR,” Thakre told the court. The police also told the court that they had found more than hundred e-mail ids used by Kavi to get the CDRs. Thousands of e-mails are also seen in these email ids which are to be analyzed. Kavi has also deleted a huge cache from his laptop. However, part of the the data was recovered from the recycle bin. After hearing both sides, magistrate P L Gupta extended the police custody of Kavi by four days.

On the other hand, the cyber-crime expert Ajinkya Nagargoje and Jasprit Singh Marwah have been remanded to judicial custody.

The court has also deferred hearing the bail plea of Rajani Pandit by four days.