Hyderabad: Cops probe if IT Grids has unauthorised data
5 people from the firm have been summoned for questioning.
Hyderabad: The Cyberabad police is assessing the large amount of data that was recovered from IT Grids India Pvt Ltd, which is facing a police investigation for allegedly making unauthorised use of data of voters in Andhra Pradesh while maintaining apps for the Telugu Desam.
The police will be serving notice to Amazon Technologies Pvt Ltd, which reportedly provided services to IT Grids India Pvt Ltd, to store the data.
The Madhapur police searched the premises of the company on Saturday night and seized some computer peripherals and servers using which the data was stored on a cloud platform.
The data, which contains the details of voters from Andhra Pradesh, including their caste, the benefits they receive from government welfare schemes, their Aadhaar numbers and so on, was allegedly collected by IT Grids through its Sevamitra mobile application used by Telugu Desam party cadre.
A Cyberabad police official said five people have been summoned — IT Grids’s chief executive officer Dakavarapu Ashok, Regonda Bhaskar, Phani Kaduluri, Gurudu Chandra Sekhar and Vikram Goud Rebbela — under the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) Section 60 (under which police can summon witnesses).
“We have pasted the notices on the house of Ashok and also sent them on WhatsApp, on the number he provided in the habeas corpus petition that he filed in the High Court. It showed that the message sent on WhatsApp was received,” said a senior Cyberabad police officer.
“The data is said to be present in the cloud storage and used through the application. It takes time to recover the data from the servers,” said a police official.
They said that they did not receive any information either from the AP government or the Election Commission of India with regard to the complaint.
“The data is said to have been collected by the government of AP and only Bluefrog Mobile Technologies Pvt Ltd at Vishakhapatnam was authorised to access it. We have to find out if the data has really been leaked, and if so by whom,” said an officer responding to a query.
A highly placed source said, “Notices are being issued to Amazon Technologies Pvt Ltd, which reportedly is in possession of the data collected by IT Grids India Pvt Ltd. It is being served notices under Section 91 of the CrPC to provide documents and data available with them. The CEO of IT Grids India Pvt Ltd has been asked to appear before us to tell whether the company has any agreement to have the data pertaining to the people of AP.”