Gujarat-based hacker Manish Bhangale has alleged that while the Mumbai police has perused the data of call records of gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s landline numbers, in which he said revenue minister Ekna
Gujarat-based hacker Manish Bhangale has alleged that while the Mumbai police has perused the data of call records of gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s landline numbers, in which he said revenue minister Eknath Khadse’s mobile number also features, no offence has been registered against the minister.
“I gave all the call records on May 18 to a crime branch official I met at the commissionerate in the city. For an hour and a half they interviewed me regarding the data and how I had accessed it,” Mr Bhangale said. The crime branch allegedly summoned the hacker again on May 24 where they asked him to elaborate and analyse the data.
Mr Bhangale has alleged that the police has been hasty in clearing Mr Khadse’s name when it should instead have been registering an offence against him. “He is a state minister who is in touch with a global terrorist. There should be some offence which makes it illegal,” he said.
On May 21, Aam Aadmi Party held a press briefing claiming it had met the CM and the Mumbai police commissioner demanding an enquiry into the matter. Following this, the Mumbai police said it had checked the call record details of Mr Khadse’s mentioned number for the period of September 2015 to April 2016 and found no such calls were made from the minister’s number nor were such calls received to the number.
But a few days after this, AAP allegedly informed police officials they had checked the data for the wrong months. “They told us that the call records they had showed that the calls were received during January-April 2015 and not September to April. After this we contacted the telecom service provider again and asked them to furnish details of the said months,” Mumbai police commissioner D.D. Padsalgikar had said when he previously spoke to The Asian Age. He had added that since the data needed was more than a year old, the telecom provider had asked for time to furnish it.
In his petition, Mr Bhangale states that the minister was interfering in the course of investigation and should be constrained.
