Hacker held for forging Dawood Ibrahim claims

Mumbai: The Cyber Cell of the Mumbai crime branch on Thursday arrested self-styled ‘ethical hacker’ Manish Bhangale, who had alleged that former minister Eknath Khadse had been speaking to fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim, for faking those claims.

Officials said they arrested Bhangale after the probe revealed that he had allegedly faked the claims before the authorities. Bhangale had falsely created Gmail accounts and was hiding details of information he got on hacking into Pakistani email addresses.

Cyber Cell sources said Bhangale had allegedly downloaded the bills from the website of Pakistan Telecom Limited and then changed the details including the phone numbers and ownership information to project that the bill belonged to Dawood and calls were exchanged between him and Khadse.  

Khadse said Bhangale is “just a pawn” and there is a mastermind behind his allegations. “He will be exposed, I hope,” he said.

Apparently in May 2016, Bhangale had given a detailed presentation to Mumbai police commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar and other senior officers showing the process by which he had accessed the call detail records (CDR) of Khadse.

“The probe in the case revealed that Bhangale had downloaded the concerned documents and then forged the details on it to show that the bills belonged to Khadse. We are investigating the case further,” said Sanjeev Saxena, joint commissioner of police (crime).

The officials are yet to find out what motivated Bhangale to do this or at whose behest he acted.

The officials had also sought details from Google of all downloads made by Bhangale by providing them his Internet protocol (IP) address. The details revealed that he had allegedly downloaded the raw bills from the website and then fudged the details on them to show that calls were exchanged between Khadse and Dawood.

Meanwhile, Preeti Sharma Menon, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) spokesperson, who had supported Bhangale when he had made the accusations, said, “It was inevitable after the government first issued a clean chit to Khadse within hours of the allegations. The government never wanted to probe the allegations. Bhangale has been fixed in the case.”

The police has registered a case against Bhangale under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act. Bhangale was produced in a local court, which remanded him to police custody till April 6.

Khadse, meanwhile, said, “I have been stating this from the start that I have nothing to do with Dawood or his wife. I had never spoken with them in my life but nobody was ready to believe. In last six-seven months I gathered information about this Manish Bhangale. My worker Ravi Barhate had lodged a complaint against Bhangale on March 5, 2017.”