On Saturday, the Cyberabad Police announced that they had arrested a man named Vinay Bhardwaj for his alleged involvement in stealing, holding, and selling personal and confidential data of 66.9 crore individuals and organizations across 24 Indian states and eight metropolitan cities. According to a press release issued by the police, Bhardwaj was found to be in possession of data from students of edutech organizations, as well as consumer and customer data from major organizations such as GST, road transport organizations, ecommerce portals, social media platforms, and fintech companies.
The accused was arrested on Friday for selling personal and confidential data that was maintained in 104 categories. The data held by the accused included information on defense personnel, government employees, PAN card holders, students in grades 9-12, senior citizens, Delhi electricity consumers, D-MAT account holders, mobile numbers of various individuals, NEET students, high net worth individuals, insurance holders, credit card and debit card holders, among others.
The accused operated through a website called “InspireWebz” located in Faridabad, Haryana. He sold the database to clients through cloud drive links. The police seized two mobile phones and two laptops, along with data from 135 categories containing sensitive information from government, private organizations, and individuals.
