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Showing contexts for: hacking email in Sangeet Gupta vs State Of U.P. And Another on 27 May, 2025Matching Fragments
10. Learned counsel for the informant has submitted that accused persons have also committed offences under the I.T. Act by stealing private documents of the informant and used such stolen documents to their benefits. The documents were either stolen by the accused after hacking the email Id of the informant or obtained them through illegal inducement. These documents were available on the E-mail Id of the informant and addressed only to certain public and government officials. Despite filing of several FIRs against the applicant, he continued to access confidential e-mails of the informant. This is wrong to say that applicant and co-accused, Sharad Gupta had arranged for domain Id of informant being one of the partners, whereas informant was provided his own independent domain e-mail Id by service provider to the firm, which was used by the informant for various purposes and used it from his mobile phone, laptop and other devices. The accused had filed some private and confidential documents of the informant, which is annexed as Annexure-II of the application before sole arbitrator. The list of the documents with the extracts are filed as Annexure-52 of the bail application. In the recent past, the GST Anti Evasion Department had initiated enquiry against the accused persons with respect to huge GST fraud committed by them in the name of MODA Cocktail. The accused had stored out of books of goods of firm worth crores of rupees at an unregistered and illegal warehouse at Kulesra engaged by the accused and his associates. He next submitted that a sensitive document in relation to the ongoing investigation in respect of said GST evasion case was shared by the informant from his email Id to an Anti-evasion, GST officer on his email Id on 18.10.2024 in response to summons sent by the officer in-charge of GST Anti Evasion Department. This e-mail was sent as representation of the informant to give his version in connection with an investigation in the illegal activities undertaken by the accused persons being the partners of the firm. This email was however accessed illegally by the accused who could not have had access to the email Id or the documents, which were personal to the informant and no other persons was marked to this email. The accused-applicant had compromised the email or hacked into informant's email account when the informant had sent an email to one Sri P.K. Srivastava (Assistant Commissioner, Anti Evasion CGST Commissionerate, Gautam Budh Nagar) on 08.08.2024 in relation to the said GST evasion investigation from his email Id. However, this email had also reached the accused persons and they attached it along with their application under Section 17 of the Arbitration Act after deleting the date of print out. This email was neither shared by the informant nor used it in any legal proceedings, therefore, the documents available with them are obtained after getting unauthorized access to the email Id of the informant. The accused had also accessed the letter sent by the informant from his email Id to the CEO of 'YEIDA' and other Senior Government Officials and these letters were also annexed by the accused in his application under Section 17 of the Arbitration & Conciliation Act. Thus, the accused committed the offence under I.T. Act as well as other cognizable offences under the BNS. The charge-sheet has been filed in all the cases lodged against the accused persons.
11. Learned counsel for the informant has further submitted that applicant was arrested on 22.12.2024 in pursuance of the present FIR and after his arrest, laptop, mobile phone, pen drive, internet dongle and other documents directly relevant to the case were seized from his possession. On 01.01.2025 serious incriminating documents such as blank letterhead of the Hon'ble Chief Minister of U.P., blank letterhead of 'YEIDA', signed letterhead of Smt. Smita Singh, 'YEIDA' and transaction documents with numerous individuals, digital documents in relation to bribery of senior government officials, photocopies of Aadhar Card, Pan card of the informant and his father, paper containing practice signatures of the informant and his father were retrieved from the laptop of the applicant in presence of learned Magistrate and on the direction of the Magistrate concerned Section 338 BNS was also added. Due to filing of stolen documents by the applicant, which are private to informant by hacking his email Id in arbitration application resulted in loss of the informant in the arbitration proceedings. The applicant and his brother adopted systematic use of unethical and illegal practice of digital theft of data by making illegal entry into the system of the informant and caused him wrongful loss. There is no plausible explanation as to how the applicant and his brother have come in possession of those documents. He lastly submitted that Mr. Pradeep Sharma of Excel Technology (Domain Provider) has stated in his statement under Section 161 Cr.P.C. that the applicant and co-accused persons had approached him to seek his help in illegal access of e-mail Id of the informant but he refused their request.