It all began when Rud India Chains employee, Amit Patwardhan began selling his company’s secrets to the competition. Rud India Chains officials decided to get proof of his scheme and apparently used that proof to fire him. Unfortunately for the company officials, the method they used to obtain the proof, in the form of Mr. Patwardhan’s personal bank account records appears to have been illegal. The company then used this ‘proof’ in a civil case against their former employee to prove their allegations against Patwardhan. The court determined that Rud India Chains hacked into the bank’s website and obtained Mr. Patwardhan’s statements without his permission, a violation of the Information Technology Act of 2000.

While Director General of Police Sanjeev Dayal concluded that Mr. Patwardhan’s disloyalty to his employer means that he is not planning on imposing punishment on Rud India other than that of finding them guilty of violating Patwardhan’s privacy. There will be no punishment on the bank either, though Dayal says that the apathy of the bank ‘speaks volumes’ as to their attitude regarding their customers’ privacy.

This case caused some soul searching on the part of Mubai’s law enforcement leaders. The State IT Secretary, Rajesh Aggarwal asked Dayal to being a special training program for all personnel and to increase the number of people working in the cyber-related crime cells. Aggarwal issued a four page speaking order bemoaning the fact that the law enforcement officers did not use technology tools properly and that they failed to even do a simple cyber investigation. They merely obtained a written statement from the bank officer who denied ever surrendering Patwardhan’s bank records.

The bank manager of the Bank of Baroda, stated that the bank account data Rud India used as their ‘proof’ did indeed match Patwardhan’s bank account, he also reiterated the banks policy of not giving out detailed bank statements to anyone without the customers prior consent. He also said that though the information on the ‘proof’ matched, that it was not in the standard format that would be printed by a customer.

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