IITian Arrested For Stealing Aadhaar Data

Bengaluru: A 31-year-old IIT post-graduate was arrested on Tuesday for accessing Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) server illegally by developing a mobile app which provides for Aadhaar e-KYC verification without authorization. The accused, Abhinav Srivastava, lives in Bengaluru and hails from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, who was taken into custody based on a complaint from the Deputy Director of UIDAI.

The post-graduate Kharagpur had developed a mobile application for Aadhaar e-KYC verification and hosted it on Google play store. To support the mobile app, Aadhaar related information, housed by the NIC server, was illegally accessed, the police said. The UIDAI data was accessed through the 'e-Hospital' application and its server.

Srivastava was the co-founder of mobile payments firm Qarth Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was acquired by cab aggregator Ola in 2016. He was currently employed with Ola as a software development engineer. The police said a CPU, four laptops, a tablet, four mobile phones, six pen drives and other materials worth Rs 2.25 lakh were seized from him and further investigation was on.