BENGALURU: Bengaluru City police and CCB have arrested a software engineer, who was employed by Ola, for developing a phone app that allegedly accessed personal information from UIDAI server.
A case was registered against 31-year-old Abhinav Srivastava at High Grounds police station a week ago following a complaint by UIDAI Deputy Director Ashok Lenin. Srivastava, who is a native of Kanpur was arrested on Tuesday.
The app - Aadhaar E-KYC Verification - which was available on Google Play Store allegedly accessed information housed by the NIC or National Informatics Centre server. The app was developed by the firm Qarth Technologies Pvt Ltd, which was co-founded by Srivastava in 2012 and acquired by Ola in March 2016.
The case was transferred to the cyber crime police on July 26. Six special teams were formed by the additional commissioner of police (crime) to track the accused.
According to a release issued by the police, Srivastava developed the Aadhaar E-KYC Verification app in January this year and has so far earned `40,000 from advertisements.
Police recovered a CPU, four laptops, a tablet, four mobile phones and six pen drives among other things worth `2.25 lakh from Srivastava. He was produced before a court and is now in police custody.
Meanwhile Ola issued a statement saying it “neither commissioned nor is involved in any such activity”.
As per reports, authentication user agencies are the firms authorised to access Aadhaar features using a licence key. A senior officer from cyber crime said the FIR named ‘e-Hospital Online Registration’ app as the agency which illegally provided Srivastava with the licence key. However, this is yet to be verified.
This mobile app on Play Store is, in fact, developed by Mobile Seva, an e-governance initiative by the government of India. The app links hospitals across the country for Aadhaar-based online registration and appointment system.