2 ex-staffers booked for stealing data, duping travel firm of Rs 1.5L

Gurgaon: The owner of a call centre in Udyog Vihar has accused two former employees of stealing confidential information of the company and using it to cause a loss of Rs 1.45 lakh.
Punit Jindal, who runs Agile Consulting Pvt Ltd, has another company named FareMachine, where the two accused — Neha Rajpal and Ajay Singh Rawat — worked. FareMachine is a travel agency that has agreements with other companies for facilitating airline tickets at cheaper rates. Jindal’s office is in Delhi’s Green Park, but the companies operate out of Gurgaon.
Jindal’s complaint, lodged at Cyber Cell police station, says that Neha and Ajay had left FareMachine sometime ago. But they still had access to the company’s credit details. The two allegedly used the company’s finances to buy tickets from two global firms — GTT Global and CH International — and sold them at much cheaper rates to clients. But the money they earned was not deposited to FareMachine’s accounts. This caused massive losses to Jindal’s firm.
Neha and Ajay also gave huge discounts on the tickets they sold. For instance, if they bought a ticket for Rs 2,000, they sold it for Rs 800 and pocketed the money.
“They have fraudulently and illegally downloaded and stolen information/data owned and belonging to the company from the computer devices/resources situated at the company’s office in Gurgaon. The accused persons have in furtherance of their criminal design, retained such data, which has been a criminal breach of trust, mischief and misuse/hacking of information technology system,” the complaint by Jindal reads.
The FIR also states that even after leaving FareMachine, the two accused kept sending emails to GTT Global and CH International to get tickets booked on their behalf. “These accused abused the global distribution system of various companies like Amadeus, Sabre and Worldspan through the system having ample authority and influence to access the sensitive data… and issued ticket at a much lower price than was permissible,” the complaint said.
Jindal claimed his company had suffered a loss of around Rs 1.5 lakh. Following his complaint, an FIR has been registered under sections 66B, 66D of the IT Act, accounting for punishment for dishonestly receiving stolen computer resource or communication device and punishment for cheating by personation online, cybercrime. The FIR also mentions IPC sections 420 for fraud and 120 for concealing design to commit an offence, among others.