Two brothers from Mulund were arrested for allegedly creating two websites that could provide personal information such as Aadhaar numbers, residential addresses, email addresses, and so on for hundreds of people by simply searching the person’s name or contact number.
The Mumbai Crime Branch discovered that both websites contained information about people from Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi, and that the accused were sharing the ID and passwords with the website’s customers – mostly loan-providing agencies – in exchange for money.
The arrested accused, Nikhil Suryaprakash Yeligatti, 23, and his elder brother Rahul Yeligatti, 26, both live in Mulund East’s Navghar area. They have been charged with theft under Section 379 of the Indian Penal Code and common intention under Section 34 of the Information Technology Act. They were taken into custody by police and remanded in custody until December 4 for further investigation.
“As per the preliminary investigation, it emerged that the accused had been running this illegal activity for over two years with the help of two other suspects – Malvin Modi and Bhavesh Modi,” said a police officer.
The officer said the two charged people from Rs 2000 a month to Rs 24000 for annual access to the websites and mobile applications developed by them where the users would get access to the data such as permanent address, temporary address, mobile numbers, Aadhaar numbers of individuals and also the details of their family members, said an official.
Officials of Unit 6 of the Crime Branch had received information about the scam two months ago, and while verifying the facts, the police contacted a person known to the accused and through him, an informant was made to connect with Nikhil to get an ID and password by paying Rs 5000, said the officer.