The 21-year-old woman from Hyderabad tells police she merely wanted to know how much the billionaire tycoon pays in taxes.Driven by curiosity, a 21-yearold woman from Hyderabad hacked into Anil Ambani's efiling of Income-Tax returns account. She not only accessed details such as the amount of tax he paid, returns from previous years, and his PAN card number, but also changed the password of his e-account on the I-T website.
The woman, who was booked by the Mumbai Police six days ago, is doing her chartered accountancy articleship at Manoj Daga & Company, a leading tax consultancy firm based in Hyderabad's Chikkadpally area. She is the niece of the firm's owner, Manoj Daga, and the daughter of a senior banker.
She told police that the only motive behind accessing Ambani's tax details was to find out the amount a billionaire business tycoon such as Anil Ambani pays in taxes, and insisted during her questioning that she meant no harm. She has been booked under various sections of the Information-Technology Act.
A Mumbai Police officer who questioned the woman said, "It is surprising that she hasn't realised the seriousness of her offence. Being a chartered accountancy student, she should have been aware of the implications of hacking into a VVIP tax account. She may be arrested once we find out what other information she accessed."
This is not the first time Anil Ambani, 54, the chairman of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) has been targeted by hackers. One of the richest men in Asia, Ambani received an email in May, 2011 that appeared to have been sent by a business journalist. The hacking attempt was revealed when ADAG contacted the journalist, who said no such email had been sent, following which the Mumbai Police launched an investigation.
How the crime was detected
The police sources said that on June 26, chartered accountant Nilesh Doshi, who looks after Anil Ambani's individual tax details, received an email from the I-T Department confirming the password of the tycoon's e-return account had been changed as requested.
Doshi, who is based at Reliance Centre in Ballard Estate, replied that no such request had been forwarded. Doshi and the rest of Ambani's staff panicked when they received another communication from the I-T Department on July 12, informing that the password had been changed again.
Suspecting corporate hacking and espionage, ADAG approached Crime Branch, following which Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy directed the Crime Branch Cyber Crime Cell to investigate.
It took the cops around 25 days to trace the area from where the account was hacked into, and a case was registered under the Information-Technology Act on September 7. "Investigation led us to the Chikkadpally firm of Manoj Daga, and a team headed by Inspector Mukund Pawar confiscated the server on which folders containing details of Ambani's I-T returns were stored. Daga wasn't aware of the crime, as he had been out of Hyderabad for more than a month after his father's death," a Crime Branch source said.
The cops found that besides Daga, only his niece, who is doing her articleship at the firm, had access to the server. "We confronted her with evidence, following which she confessed to accessing Anil Ambani's tax returns details," a Crime Branch officer said. Roy said, "We have seized a large amount of electronic evidence, and will take a call on further action after thoroughly evaluating the evidence"
The hacking
The woman accessed Anil Ambani's PAN card number from the Income-Tax Department website by providing basic details such as his birth date, mother's name, etc. She then logged on the Income-Tax Department's portal for filing e-returns (incometaxindiaefiling. gov.in) using an email account by the name khurana.jeet.2001@gmail.com, and used Anil Ambani's PAN card number to reset the password of his account.
Once the I-T Department sent the password to the gmail account listed by the accused, she accessed the details of his tax returns. "It is surprising that the I-T Department didn't bother to verify the authenticity of the password change request, and sent the new password to an unknown email ID. The accused was nailed after she created folders containing details of Ambani's I-T returns using the firm's server," a Crime Branch officer said.
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