Infotech firm's officials arrested for breach of trust

MUMBAI: Director of a leading infotech services company and a senior official were arrested today on charges of criminal breach of trust and violation of the Information Technology Act, after the Maharashtra Public Service Commission's ( MPSC) complaint that its data either got corrupted or deleted by the company, the police said.

Vivek Chandel (41), director of VAST India Pvt Ltd, was arrested from his hideout at Panvel while Virendra Asolkar (25), a senior official of the company, was nabbed from its Andheri office, an officer at the police cyber cell told PTI.

The MPSC had lost data of lakhs of candidates from its server in March, the police said.

The MPSC was scheduled to conduct a preliminary exam for the state civil services on April 7 in 35 districts for 265 vacancies, to select grade I and II officers.

When some applicants didn't get their hall tickets by March 28, they inquired with the Commission, only to find that all their data was missing, which forced the government to postpone the exam.

Initially, the data loss was blamed on a possible computer virus by VAST India Pvt Ltd, which was entrusted the task of online registration for the exam, but a high-level internal probe by MPSC and the state information technology (IT) department concluded that there was a criminal breach of trust by the company, to allegedly postpone the exam and defame the commission.

Accordingly, MPSC Deputy Secretary Pramod Achrekar complained to the cyber cell which registered an FIR against the company, director and others under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) and Section 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.