UP: 3 techies held for threatening Prl Secretary, hacking his credit card

According to the principal secretary, on November 21, he received a message on his phone about the withdrawal of Rs 49,999 in foreign currency from his SBI credit card. He then contacted the SBI branch here and got the credit card blocked.

Lucknow:Three men were arrested on charges of extortion by the cyber crime cell of UP police on Sunday on the complaint of the Principal Secretary of Namami Gange and Rural Water Supply Department, Anurag Srivastava. The accused had allegedly hacked the personal data of the family members and demanded an amount of Rs 80 lakh. All three accused used to work in the Rural Water Supply (RWS) department on a contractual basis.

Cyber crime station in-charge Mohammad Muslim Kha said that the three youths, who attempted extortion by sending threatening e-mails to Principal Secretary Anurag Srivastava and his family members, have been arrested with the help of surveillance. The accused have been identified as Amit Pratap Singh, a resident of Lucknow's Ujaithia market, Rajneesh Nigam, a resident of Eldeco Saubhagyam Vrindavan colony, and Hardik Khanna, a resident of Gomti Nagar.

Police investigation has revealed that all three accused were contract workers in the Rural Water Supply Department, where they used to look after the proper functioning of servers in the office. The miscreants had tampered with official data and sent threatening mail to the officer. They even hacked the mail IDs of the chief secretary and four of his family members and threatened to leak them.

They tried to extort Rs 80 lakh in bitcoins from the victims and also made purchases from his credit card. According to the principal secretary, on November 21, he received a message on his phone about the withdrawal of Rs 49,999 in foreign currency from his SBI credit card. He then contacted the SBI branch here and got the credit card blocked.