Case : Intellectual property theft

State : Karnataka, India

City : Bangalore, India

Sections of Law 65 and 66 of the IT Act 2000, 381, 420 of the Indian Penal Code.

Background The complainant (software company based in Bangalore) alleged that some of the company’s former employees had accessed the company’s IT system and tampered with the source code of the software under development.

Investigation The investigating team visited the complainant’s premises and scanned the logs of e-mails. They identified the IP address and using tracing software traced the ISP and the address of the place where the e-mails had been sent. This address was of a Hyderabad based company. On visiting the company the investigating team found 13 computers and a server. Using specialized forensic tools the disks were imaged and analysed by the team. The analysis revealed that the original source code as well as its tampered version had been stored from these systems.

Current status The investigating team arrested the accused in India and efforts are underway to arrest the others who are presently in the US. The case is in its final stages awaiting the opinion report from C-DAC.