Youth who 'broke' into Airtel's system is in Judicial custody

New Delhi, Jul 4: 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 a 15-day judicial custody even as the accused filed a bail plea before the court.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kanwaljeet Arora sent Ankit Srivastava, a resident of Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, to judicial custody till July 19.

Ankit had last week been remanded to seven day police custody after the Special cell of Delhi Police, on a complaint by Airtel, registered an FIR on June 24 against him under the provisions of the Information Technology Act. Ankit was arrested on June 26.

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''.

In his bail application before the court, Ankit claimed that he was not hacking the website but said a fault in the Airtel security system that allowed anybody to access billing details by putting an id.

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

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's bail plea will come up for hearing before the court tomorrow.

UNI