Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Cyber police arrested a man and his minor son for hacking the data of the Principal Secretary to Government of Uttar Pradesh, Rural Water Supply Department, Anurag Srivastava, and demanding Rs 80 lakhs money from him and his family members, officials said on Tuesday. The accused mastermind has been identified as Satyaprakash, originally from Bihar and presently residing at Parth Apartment in Lucknow.
As per police, Satyaprakash working as an IT consultant in Jal Jeevan Mission had asked for the log in password from Srivastava on the pretext of “fixing the fault” from his laptop. Satyaprakash, in connivance with three other accused arrested earlier, hacked his and his family members' email IDs and later demanded Rs 80 lakhs from them through threatening e mails, police said.
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The other co-accused arrested in the case have been identified as Amit Pratap Singh, a resident of Uttarethia market in Lucknow, Rajneesh Nigam, a resident of Eldeco Saubhagyam Vrindavan and Hardik Khanna, a resident of Gomtinagar. The three accused are contract workers in the Rural Water Supply Department.
The Inspector of Cyber Crime Police Station said they had also hacked Srivastava's credit card to make purchases in Lucknow itself. He said the accused were arrested based on the technical evidence and surveillance of the gadgets of the accused. According to Inspector Muslim Khan, Satya Prakash revealed during the police interrogation that he had thought that the Principal Secretary would not file a case for such a small amount.
