Judge’s messaging app hacked, friends duped of Rs 1.10 lakh

| | New Delhi
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Judge’s messaging app hacked, friends duped of Rs 1.10 lakh

Friday, 19 July 2024 | PTI | New Delhi

An additional sessions judge has filed a police complaint alleging that cyber criminals took control of one of his messaging applications for nearly six hours and also made calls from it dupe his friends of Rs 1.10 lakh, officials said on Thursday.

The judge of the Rohini district court has also requested a probe to ascertain why no one from the messaging platform attended to his complaint and how his mobile service provider forwarded calls from his number to an unknown number , they said.

The FIR in the case has been registered by the Rohini district cyber police under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 318(4) and 319(2) that pertain to cheating through dishonestly inducing a person by delivery of a property and impersonation.

In his complaint, the judge said at 12:35 pm on July 11, he received a call from the unknown number on his mobile-phone, and was told that a "courier boy" was waiting outside his house to deliver bank documents.

The additional sessions judge (ASJ) was asked to call the "courier boy" to allow him to handover the documents to the security guard at his house and a number was sent to his phone through SMS, according to the FIR shared by the Rohini cyber police.

The ASJ said he was expecting some documents and as he was "busy with his judicial work", he fell into their trap and called the number, the FIR stated. The judge has a screenshot of the SMS.

When he called the number, his messaging application account "immediately got registered on another device for which I received an SMS. My calls and SMS were diverted to the alleged (unknown) number", the FIR read.

"In the meantime, I came to know that a person has started demanding money using my messaging account. I immediately called the police official from the cyber police station in Rohini," it read. The judge also got his bank account blocked.

He could re-access his messaging application around 5.20 pm with the help of a cyber police team, the officials said, citing the FIR.

They said it was found that his messaging account was last accessed from a location in Siwan in Bihar and the 12:35 pm call was traced to a place near Jamshedpur in Jharkhand.

The ASJ said before he could re-access his messaging account, he "came to know that two of my friends transferred Rs 1.10 lakh".

A complaint was also raised with the messaging application support service from "my device through email which was received by the support service", he said in his complaint. "The nodal officer of the messaging service was also contacted but he did not pick the phone and an investigating officer of the Delhi Police also sent an email through his government email address," the FIR read.

The judge told police that even after sending emails and mentioning that a financial fraud has happened, the messaging application failed to suspend his account

"It is requested that the role of that messaging application may also be investigated (on) why they did not accept my request despite my specific complaint. Later on I realised that the accused persons has used forwarded my calls to his number," read the FIR.

"It is surprising that the mobile network service provider did not even ask whether I was sure about it and in micro seconds forwarded my call to some unknown number which was not even in my contact list," it said.

The judge said the issue will also be raised with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

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