THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Portending trouble for IAS officer K Gopalakrishnan, who landed in a spot over creating a WhatsApp group exclusively for Hindu bureaucrats, Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan has forwarded the police report on the matter to the CM for further action.
The police report said Gopalakrishnan’s claim that his phone was hacked could not be corroborated. Gopalakrishnan had said the group was created without his knowledge.
Sources said the CS also submitted a note with the report, saying the explanation by the officer, who is the director of the industries and commerce department, was not satisfactory. The police had reached the conclusion after perusing reports from Google and the Internet Service Provider (ISP), which categorically said there was no evidence to corroborate the official’s hacking claim. Google said it did not detect any malicious third-party app in Gopalakrishnan’s phone, which revealed it was not accessed remotely, as the police had initially suspected.
The Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) provided by the ISP also revealed there were no suspicious network activities and unauthorised data transfer, further ruling out the hacking claim. The Forensic Science Lab (FSL), which analysed the two smartphones used by Gopalakrishnan, could not make headway as the devices had been formatted before the officer handed them over to the police.
Created, deleted
The group, Mallu Hindu Off’, was created on October 31 and had both serving and retired bureaucrats. It was deleted after some of the added members pointed out the impropriety.