The accused would buy tatkal slots and sell them to the public at a premium.
Task Force sleuths (North Zone) on Friday nabbed a gang of 7 who hacked the website owned by the Hyderabad Regional Passport Office and sold slots available to the general public at a premium.
The RPO website, www.passport.gov.in is maintained by National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi.
Giving details of the accused, North Zone Task Force officials said that the prime accused in the case, Gorantla Lathadhara (36) - with the help of Shaik Subhani (34), Mohammed Jahangir (45), Bhooma Srihari (56), Giddada Chinna (29), Syed Valiuddin (30) and Kondareddy (35) - used to hack into the website of the passport office and book the 'tatkal' slots available for the general public for himself.
He, then, with the other co-accused, sold these slots at a premium to applicants who were in urgent need of passports.
Suspicion that there was something amiss dawned on the passport officials as complaints of the slots reserved being exhausted within a few minutes of their being made available, led to the officials at the RPO to file a complaint with the police.
During the preliminary enquiry, it was strongly suspected that someone was hacking the website illegally and blocking the slots. The Task Force team worked out the available leads and surveillance was kept over the suspects, which led to the nabbing of the 7-member gang.
The main accused, Gorantla Lathadhara Rao, holds a graduate diploma in computer applications from Narsaraopet. He used to work as a DTP operator, and while holding this job, he met a travel agent, Sheik Subhani.
Subhani used to entrust Lathadhara Rao with the task of registering applications under the tatkal scheme. He would get Rs. 100 as commission for filing each application.
The number of slots under the tatkal scheme was reduced from February 2010, and applicants in urgent need of passports started requesting the passport agents for submitting their passport applications by offering huge amounts to them, as they could not register their applications online in the limited time span released by the authorities.
Lathadhar Rao, adept in computer application, hacked into the website www.passport.gov.in and utilised some bugs in the website to access the server of NIC, and succeeded in submitting the passport applications with confirmed dates under the tatkal scheme, though such dates were yet to be released by the passport authorities officially.
Once this was successfully done, the other accused, all passport agents, made a beeline to Subhani to get slots for their customers.
Each passport agent would charge applicants Rs. 3,000 to Rs. 5,000 for acquiring passports. The agents then paid Subhani Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2000, and he would split the money with Lathadhar Rao.
It is believed that till the time they were caught, Lathadhar Rao and Subhani had managed to upload around 3,000 passport applications.
The laptop used by Lathadhar Rao, along with wireless internet modem (Reliance CDMA), computer systems used by the passport agents in their offices and copies of passport applications of the applicants were seized by the police.
The case has been handed over to Market Police Station for further action.
Courtesy: INN