Bengaluru techie who hacked Aadhaar database may walk away free

The 31-year-old IIT Kharagpur alumnus who hacked into Aadhar database and accessed information illegally may soon walk away free. 

Abhinav Srivastava was arrested after the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) officials complained about unauthorised access to know your customer (KYC) details of Aadhaar cardholders. 

Cyber-law experts and police insiders say that the IITian had no criminal intent when he developed the App to access KYC details and may be let go with a fine and no imprisonment, reported the Deccan Herald.

Also Read: Hacker stuns Bengaluru cops with his demonstration of accessing Aadhaar information illegally

“Srivastava, through his app, facilitated access to particulars of a given Aadhaar cardholder to get his/her Aadhaar details and not those of anybody else. Thus, it does not amount to cheating. If there were mala fide intention, he would have designed, developed the app and written codes for it from proxy-IDs, leaving no digital footprints of his involvement. But that is not the case here,” said Na Vijayashankar of Naavi-Cyber Law Educationist to Deccan Herald.

The police adopted an over-aggressive approach towards the IITian because his ‘Aadhaar e-KYC’ app fiddled with the Centre’s UIDAI server. Srivastava has been booked under Section 468 of the IPC (forgery for the purpose of cheating), which is a non-bailable offence. But investigation so far has not established that he had cheated anybody. 

However, Srivastava will only face charges of an oversight offence and ignorance for the law and will be penalised accordingly.

The IITian, however, demonstrated loopholes in the coding and security of the database and the cyber police and Aadhaar officials will now fix the flaws.

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• hacked Aadhaar database
• walk away free