AHMEDABAD: Cybercrime officials investigating the Rajkot hospital video leak case have arrested three more people from Gujarat and Maharashtra, busting a nationwide racket. The suspects were allegedly part of a large-scale CCTV hacking operation that involved collecting and selling indecent videos of women. In all, six people have been arrested so far.
DCP, Cybercrime, Lavina Sinha, said on Sunday, “The accused used hacking tools and stole at least 50,000 videos in nine months, which include footage from schools, factories, colleges, corporate houses and even bedrooms.”
Sinha stated that three newly arrested suspects were involved in hacking CCTV cameras at public places. They were apprehended from Sangli and Surat based on technical analysis and human intelligence. They are: Parit Dhamelia, a BCom graduate from Surat with foreign training in CCTV hacking; Vaibhav Mane, a BTech in computer science from Sangli, Maharashtra, who was responsible for marketing the footage on Telegram channel; and Ryan Pereira, a management studies student from Vasai, Maharashtra, who allegedly sold footage on the channel.
Ahmedabad city crime branch and the cybercrime branch had earlier arrested three people including alleged mastermind Prajwal Taili from Latur in Maharashtra, Praj Patil from Sangli and Chandraprakash Phoolchand from Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh. Taili and Patil were NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) aspirants.
Investigation revealed that Dhamelia employed three different software programs to hack CCTV systems, using brute force attacks to access unsecured IPs and ports. This allowed him to infiltrate the Rajkot hospital’s CCTV system and gain control over live footage.
The stolen footage was shared with Pereira and Rohit Sisodia from Gurugram, who remains at large. Sisodia then passed the footage to Taili, who sold it through the Telegram channel, earning lakhs of rupees.
The gang, primarily engaged in voyeurism, learned hacking techniques specifically from different Telegram channels run by foreign nationals, as well as from tutorial videos. Besides the CCTV footage they collected, they also used hidden cameras and cellphones to shoot indecent videos of women. To hide where they operated from, they used VPNs that showed their locations as Romania and Atlanta.
The case came to light when cybercrime officials discovered indecent videos from a Rajkot hospital’s labour and check-up room during a suo motu investigation. Officials have since filed charges of cyber terrorism.