When data thieves hit the bottle

The celebrated penchant of a sizeable number of Keralites for alcohol is well known. The sales figures of alcohol during Vishu, Easter, Onam and Christmas underline this. While the stress all these years was on Indian-made foreign liquor, Malayalis seem to be in no mood to be outdone in the case of imported liquor either. Sensing an opportunity in this new-found demand, a ‘Duty Free’ shop operating inside Trivandrum International Airport has tapped into the passenger manifest to list out those not availing their quota of liquor and leverage the same for sale in the black market.

The sheer scale of the operation is mind-boggling. The Customs Department, which  found that the shop run by Plus Max had allegedly used the passport details of nearly 13,000 international passengers who travelled through the airport in just four months, from September-December 2017, to divert an estimated `6 crore worth foreign liquor into the black market.

One way to look at it is as a mere violation of Excise and Customs rules. But Customs has decided to take it to another level—a major national security breach; as it is clearly a case of illegal access by the company of the highly sensitive passenger manifest  supposed to be in the possession of only the airport authority and the immigration wing of the Intelligence Bureau.

After the Customs Department took up this issue, it has emerged that this scam could not have been perpetrated without the aid and abetment of some officers of the Airports Authority of India. The Customs Department has already apprised the National Investigation Agency and Intelligence Bureau of the serious nature of this scam that goes beyond mere diversion of foreign liquor.

Evidently, there is something that is rotten in some of our key establishments. It now emerges sensitive information that could be used for anti-national activities is no longer safe from probing eyes. If it has happened in one airport, surely other airports too are equally porous. That is a worrying thought.