Four held by Ahmedabad Police for hacking into RTO system, clearing licence applications

After the cyber crime cell took over the case, they found that the backlog data of the applications were cleared by a spyware used to hack the official website ‘Sarathi’ from outside the system network of RTO.

According to officials, the accused were identified and arrested when the applicants who 4 held for hacking into RTO system, clearing licence applications received their driving licence illegally were tracked. Two of those arrested have worked with the RTO earlier and were aware of its systems.

“The applicants told us that they were contacted by a gang of four persons who told them to give their name, date of birth and an address proof and were charged different amount for their licence. There was no appointment or driving test taken and in a span of 20 days, they received their licence via speed post. In all the cases, it was revealed that they were contacted by a person called Jignesh Modi,” said V B Barad, police inspector, Cyber Crime Cell.

The main accused, identified as Jignesh Modi, is a native of Hasanpur in Ahmedabad, who runs a driving school and had worked in the RTO department for nine years. The other accused is Gaurav Sapovadia, a native of Jamnagar, who runs SMW Enterprises, a company which works on contractual basis with RTO to install speed governors. The other two accused – Sandeep Markana, a native of Rajkot and Sanket Raphaliya, a native of Ahmedabad – used to act as contacts for the main accused.

“Since Jignesh is a former employee at RTO office in Vastral, Ahmedabad, on December 24, 2018, he entered the office and illegally entered a spyware pen drive in one of the computer systems and extracted the user id and password of the RTO software system. Then Gaurav, who is also adept with the technology, changed the backlog entry of the applicants and illegally got it cleared by filling the basic data of their clients. Sandeep and Sanket used to get clients for Gaurav and Jignesh from Ahmedabad and Rajkot,” said Barad.

All accused have been arrested under the Indian Penal Code sections 406, 420, 465 and 467 for criminal breach of trust, fraud, forgery and forgery of valuable security and sections of the IT act.