BENGALURU: Interrogation of the Railway ticketing scamster, 35-year-old Ghulam Mustafa has revealed that he had stored details on Indian Space Research Organisation’s sophisticated Cartosat series of satellites. These satellites -- totally nine -- are a series which are part of India’s remote sensing programme used for Earth's resource management, defence services and monitoring.
Investigators have smelled something “very fishy”. “We have taken him into custody from the Railway Police Force (RPF) for 10 days. Primary interrogation has revealed not only about the e-ticketing scam but his possible terror links, too. The matter is very serious,” said an investigating officer involved in the interrogation.
Mustafa, a native of Jharkhand, was arrested from Bhubaneshwar on January 8 and was found to be the key operator of the e-ticketing scam in India. During his arrest, the police had seized two laptops and a mobile phone. RPF had launched an operation for him called ‘Operation Thunderstorm’ since last year against ticket touts and this man was under their radar.
After his arrest, it was known that he had used a software named ANMS and managed to do the multi-crore e-ticketing scam.
However, as the RPF cannot investigate the scam and it was known that Mustafa stayed in a room in Rajagopalnagar area of Bengaluru, a complaint was lodged on January 15 by Akhilesh Kumar Tiwari of RPF. Based on that complaint the Rajgopalnagar Police took him to custody and were investigating when they came upon this shocking revelation that Mustafa had seemingly sensitive details about ISRO’s Cartosat series of satellites.
Cartosat-3 with the highest camera resolution in its time has the capability of high-quality imaging at one-metre resolution and was launched on November 27, 2019. All nine satellites in the Cartosat series are currently operational.
When his laptop was seized along with details of central government websites, bank account details, a number of Pakistani softwares, several hacking softwares, alongside details pertaining to ISRO’s CartoSat, the investigators realised they had stumbled on “something big”.
“He is a dangerous criminal with a rich knowledge of technology. There were several encrypted messages on his laptop. It is a very sensitive issue,” said another official involved in the investigation.
The police are also interrogating the owner who gave him the room and also finding out if there are Mustafa’s other associates terror-related links who had stayed with him or were in contact with him.
HAWALA AND CRYPTO BUSINESS
Mustafa and his team has apparently some 3,000 bank accounts under their names and the kingpin for this is yet to be arrested.
“We suspect that the kingpin Is one Hamid Ashraf who is based in Dubai,” Arun Kumar, Director General of RPF had earlier said.
Interestingly, Hamid Ashraf, has reportedly sent a message to the DG listing out 25 things that allegedly exposed IRCTC's security system.
The purported message by him also apparently challenges the DG and says that the ANMS software will be closed forever on January 25, 2020.
Ashraf is being hunted by IB, NIA, and RAW too. “With specific links established to Ashraf he has also revealed that he would convert the money collected through various bank accounts to cryptocurrency and send that abroad through shadow net, which was allegedly used in “terror funding, money laundering, and others,” the officer added.
Meanwhile, Mustafa was interrogated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) too. The intelligence Bureau which was also involved in the interrogation found that he was using the ‘Darknet’ for his activities.
“He personally has 10 bank accounts in his name and there has been digital footprints to show his terror links,” the officer investigating said.
According to NIA sources, the decryption of his laptop revealed that he was a follower of the Pakistan-based Tableek-e-Jamaat and had many Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Gulf countries’, Indonesian, and Nepali numbers.
He is also said to have transacted with several anti-national elements from Bhatkal (Karnataka) and Odisha.
CASE TO CID?
The Bengaluru police are looking at the sensitivity of the case and the nature of involvement of several anti-national elements and the case might soon be handed over to Central Investigation Department.