7-day PC for youth who 'broke' into Airtel's computer system

New Delhi, Jun 27 (UNI) A city court today remanded a youth, who 'broke' into the computerised system of telecom service provider Airtel and 'procured' billing details of 26 people, to seven days police custody.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Jain sent Ankit Srivastava, a resident of Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, to police custody till July 4.

On a complaint lodged by Airtel, Special Cell of Delhi Police had registered an FIR on June 24 against Ankit under the provisions of the Information Technology Act.

It was alleged that Ankit had attempted to 'procure' billing details of 59 more people, including some senior police officials.

Ankit was arrested yesterday.

The police told the court that the accused demanded Rs one crore from the Airtel for not going to the media to ''show how easy it was to get such details''.

Police sought his custody to find out if Ankit misused the information he had illegally procured.

On his part, Ankit alleged that Airtel's complaint against him was a 'counter move', after he had lodged an FIR against the company with Senior Suprintendent of Police Ghaziabad on June 21 claiming that the company's system and the data of its subcribers', including his, was not 'safe'.

Ankit, who is a B Com graduate with no technical expertise, stated there was inherent defect in Airtel's security system and there was no need for 'hacking' it to get such details.

However, the court did not agree with his arguements and said even if there was a defect in the system, he should have not 'obtained' the billing details of others and could have made a point by just his obtaining own billing details.

UNI XR VD KP1744