BHUBANESWAR: Prasanna Kumar Jena, a 54-year-old businessman, has filed the first case in the state under the

Information Technology (IT) Act against an e-procurement company that allegedly provided him wrong information regarding a tender that did not exist. The complainant also demanded compensation of Rs five lakh from the company for making him a member of its website by misrepresenting facts. Jena, who deals with transportation of steel, received a mail from tendertiger.com, an eprocurement firm, that claimed to provide tender alert services. "I was told that being a registered member of the website would give me a competitive advantage as they post new tender details, corrigendums, minutes of pre-bid meetings and tender results. I subscribed to the service by paying a subscription fee of Rs 8,000, following which I got detail of a tender by Steel Authority of India Ltd for appointment of a consignment agent for transportation, handling and storage of iron and steel materials in Deogarh. But when I inquired at the SAIL office, they said they hadn't issued any such tender out," Jena said.

"This is the first and only case filed under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, and is sub-judice at present," said state IT secretary M S Padhi. "The IT secretary of the state is the adjudicating officer of the case. He has heard both the parties and reserved the hearing till October 20. Even though a large number of IT-related crimes occur in the state, due to lack of awareness, not many cases are zfiled under this act," said Sambit Dash, advocate of the complainant.

The cover has been blown off a big scandal, involving sex, pornography, the internet and an unlikely mastermind, allegedly a medical doctor. The case which has made waves primarily owing to its prurient element and the bizarre ways in which youth were ensnared to participate, in an ``island'' in the northern half of the city, is also a first in another sense: the first case in the State, where a prosecution has been launched under the Information Technology Act. Kalanjikuppam, a sleepy fishing village has become the focus of media attention, besides speculation. The case also involves two independent houses at Valasaravakkam and Nerkundram, where young school dropouts (both boys and girls) were caught in his web by the accused doctor, who allegedly filmed them either on the sly or openly, and sold his material in 23 countries. The story began to unravel after the city police received a complaint from Ganesh who claimed he was a victim, on December 22. Police attention then turned to L. Prakash, a doctor, who has held positions in professional medical bodies, and has publications to his credit. ``We were amazed by the kind of work he was involved in and the amount of money he had earned through the porn websites created by him'', says a senior police officer. Two cases have been filed against the doctor; one under Information Technology Act and the other under Arms Act. The investigating officer is the Assistant Commissioner of Police, T.Nagar, V. Rajendran. As per Section 67 of the IT Act, dealing with obscenity, on the first conviction, the sentence can be five years in prison with a fine of Rs. 1,000. On second conviction the penalty may extend for ten years with a fine of Rs. 2 lakhs. The case is an interesting study of the use of the Internet for purveying the material. A team of five led by Mr. V. Sriram, founder-chief technologist of eAlcatraz Consulting, an Information Security Company, helped the police unravel the operation. The team gathered evidence from the doctor's clinic and Nerkundram home. They also used the Internet chat streams, to track the offers made by the accused to youth, to attract them, giving his mobile telephone number also. The team developed some of the in-house tools, checking traffic, decrypting, checking for email content and filtering specific content on the internet. Tracking the transactions of the doctor using specially developed programmes also revealed companies which the doctor referred to for fund transfers, and details about one transaction involving 1.2 lakh US dollars were tracked. The investigation revealed that the registered owner of the website was Pradeep Lakshmanan in the U.S.. Initially, his site was hosted from Washington D.C. and when the doctor was arrested, the content was deleted from the site and it was hosted from California, as if it had originated anew. But those logs also were collected. Once again the site moved to Illinois. The seized computer will be handed over to the Magistrate, as evidence, say the police.

There are reports of a girl missing, whose picture has been traced from the records. The doctor is allegedly seen in photos retrieved from his premises, with trophies of pigs and dogs which were shot dead by him. The police were also probing whether there was any link between the death of a youth and negligence by the doctor. The relatives of the youth turned violent after the incident. The doctor was producing CDs and advertised a computer training institute in the Teynampet area, which promised H1 visas. But the course was never conducted. When the students questioned the doctor, they were allegedly threatened. The police are probing this case also. The police case is that concealed video cameras were used by the accused to produce MPEG 2 format movie clips and photos in JPEG format for the net. He had also opened many email accounts and each was used for a different purpose. A good knowledge of using the Internet helped to pursue the business, though the failure of any of the activities to raise suspicion remains a mystery. The island house at Kalanjikuppam village near Ennore had no human activity in the vicinity, but possessed a dance floor and marble tiling. At present six teams are working day and night, gathering more clues and analysing the available information. Even the police cannot hazard a guess on when the evidence will be fully sifted. The first IT Act case in Tamil Nadu promises to throw up more interesting facts as the discs are swept by computer experts.

Geetika Sharma suicide case: Delhi Police slap sections of IT Act against Kanda
Fresh trouble brewed for former Haryana minister Gopal Kanda, arrested in the suicide case of his former employee, on Tuesday with Delhi Police slapping sections of Information Technology Act against him for allegedly sending false electronic message leading to harassment of the deceased. Dharmendra Kumar, Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), said police have invoked Section 66(A), sending information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character or false or to deceive or to mislead, against Kanda. "We have invoked this section as the accused through electronic message, forged details and send it," Kumar told reporters without elaborating. Geetika had allegedly committed suicide on August 5 in her Ashok Vihar residence and in her suicide note had pointed fingers at Kanda, her former employer at now-defunct MDLR airline and Aruna Chaddha. The deceased and her family alleged that Kanda was pressurising Geetika to rejoin his firm after she left the job. The family had also alleged that Kanda had sent an email to Emirates Airline where Geetika was working after leaving MDLR airline claiming that she was involved in a cheating case. It was also alleged that a forged look out notice in the name of Geetika was also emailed to Emirates. Kanda and Chaddha had earlier denied allegations. After raiding the premises of Kanda, Kumar said, investigators had seized hard disks and relevant documents. Asked whether police would go for brainmapping as Kanda was not opening up, Kumar said they have collected a lot of evidence against Kanda.

Justice eludes AI staff booked under IT Act

Eight months after two Air India employees K.V. Jagannath Rao and Mayank Sharma were arrested under section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act and imprisoned for 12 days; and over two months after the country expressed outrage over a similar arrest of two Palghar girls for a post on Facebook, the two Air India employees are yet to get justice. In the Palghar case, the police officers responsible for booking the girls were suspended pending inquiry and the police soon filed a closure report stating that no case was made out against the two girls. Mr. Rao and Mr. Sharma, on the other hand, have been running from pillar to post seeking action against the errant policemen and the complainant who allegedly maliciously registered a complaint against them. We have written more than 30 letters to various senior police officers pointing out the illegality of the police action against us. Niket Kaushik (Additional Commissioner of Police) promised us two months ago that departmental action will be taken against the policemen responsible for illegalities. But no action has been taken till now. If the police have not erred, why have they not filed a charge sheet against us even eight months after the FIR (First Information Report) was registered? asked Mr. Sharma. Mr. Sharma and Mr. Rao were picked up from their residences at midnight by police officials around eight months ago. They were booked for uploading lascivious and defamatory content on Facebook and Orkut against a local politician and for threatening him with death. They were also booked for insulting the national flag. Section 506(2) of the Indian Penal Code, Sections 66A and 67 of the IT Act and Section Two of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 were slapped on them. The flag in question was not the national flag, but the flag of the Congress party. How could the police err in making out the national flag? he asked. They alleged that they were booked at the behest of a local politician of the Nationalist Congress Party who wanted to settle personal scores with them. The original complaint was given by Kiran Pawaskar. Sagar Karnik followed it up on his behalf. It is mentioned in the FIR, as well. Then why has a counter-FIR been registered only against Sagar Karnik? Why has Kiran Pawaskar not been booked? Mr. Sharma asked. Despite blatant irregularities in our case and harassment by the police officials of the Bandra Kurla Complex cyber crime police station, no action has been taken by the senior police. The police official investigating our case forged our remand application and added a non-bailable section in his handwriting in the court, when he had no sanction from his authorities. The same section (67A of the IT Act) was missing in the FIR and in the next remand application. They also impounded our passports and returned them to us only after the Bombay High Court intervened. The duo has also written to Mumbai Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy, but has not received any response. They alleged that apart from booking a counter-complaint against Mr. Karnik, the police have not taken any action. We feel that the police misused their power under political pressure. They did not even summon us for investigation. And now they are playing delay tactics,