MUMBAI, India -- Two hackers who defaced the website of Mumbai police’s Cyber Crime Cell last month are finding that the cops are becoming very interested in them.
After being arrested for the crime of hacking and subsequently released on bail, the hackers found themselves in police custody again, this time for a more serious crime –- credit card theft, with most of the victims being Americans.
The police said they have new evidence against the two hackers, but one of the accused, Mahesh Mhatre, said the CCC is just out for vengeance. He had earlier alleged that he had been beaten while in custody, a case that is pending in a magistrate's court.
"They have arrested me again because I dared to speak against them," Mhatre said. "They want to teach me a lesson."
Mhatre was speaking from a hospital where he was taken for a routine medical check-up. The police were playing safe this time, so that Mhatre couldn't accuse the department of ill treatment again.
On July 5, Anand Khare, who called himself Dr. Neukar, gained control of CCC’s website -- with the help of Mahesh Mhatre -- and pasted abusive messages challenging the cops to nab them.
Up to the challenge, the police arrested them within days, along with two others. All four were subsequently granted bail. But Mhatre had already filed a complaint in court saying the cops had broken his arm during interrogation.
"The re-arrest of Mhatre is a pressure tactic," said Mhatre’s advocate, P.M. Pradhan. "My client was beaten up in police custody after the first arrest, during interrogation, and he filed a complaint in the court. The magistrate took a strong view of the police conduct and asked them to submit a report on what exactly happened in custody. Now, the cops want Mhatre to withdraw his complaint. Obviously they are very angry with him."
The police deny the charge: "We’re not being vindictive," said the chief of CCC, Manoj Lohiya. "There is a very strong case against the two. From the evidence that has been gathered from the hard disks of their computers, we suspect that they may have misused about 225 credit cards, most of which belonged to American nationals. From the 10 credit cards that we have investigated, we believe that the hackers made small purchases amounting to about $9,000, chiefly to buy software and membership of pornographic sites. Further investigations are on."
However, an official who was part of the team that interrogated the hackers said, "While there is evidence that these guys did misuse the credit cards, there is no proof that all the illegal purchases ... were made by them alone. I am sure other hackers from different parts of the world, too, made purchases on these cards. But telling the magistrate that Rs. 450,000 worth of stuff ($9,000) was stolen sounds more like a serious crime. Let’s be practical about it. Why should cops love these hackers? First they hack their site and then accuse them of assault."
The reason the credit card theft angle was not taken up earlier, Lohiya added, was because the police didn’t have substantial evidence yet. "After we collected solid evidence, we chose to arrest them again," Lohiya said.
Vijay Mukhi, a computer educator who is a part of CCC, said he saw the e-mails that the hackers received, and there was credit card information and details of transactions.
"Even if Mhatre’s retribution theory is true, even if we say that cops have taken things personally, there is no escaping the fact there is a strong case against them," Mukhi said.
