Indian Police discover mobile phone-based spying racket

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) of the Bangalore police have discovered a private mobile phone-based spying racket being run for a private detective agency by an Indian software developer with funding from Peru.

The CCB's investigations have found that a company called Lynx Security and Detective Services Pvt Ltd is using snooping software on Android and BlackBerry-based mobile phones "to monitor the phone calls and messages of people, on behalf of their clients''.

Two Indians — Nikhil Giri from Lynx and Virendra Singh Rawat a mobile software developer from Pune — who developed the snooping software for smart phones with the help of code writers have been placed under arrest by the CCB.

"Virendra Singh Rawat had tied up with a company based in Peru called Controlem.com to co-develop and host the developed software on their servers. The whole software development was funded by Roberto Martinez and Piero Meza both Peru nationals,'' the police said.

Investigations so far have revealed that Rawat provided the software to the private detective agency who used it "to monitor the activities of mobile phones of people involved in domestic disputes, business rivalries and employees of organisations,'' the CCB said.

Computers, hard discs, mobile phones, Android application packages, cash and other records were seized from the security agency and a case has been registered in the Ashoknagar police station under sections of the Information Technology Act, the Indian Telegraph Act and the IPC.

The private detective agency snooped on hundreds of smart phones by installing an application after clandestinely getting hold of the target mobile phone.

"A software is downloaded on to the mobile phone and installed from a link using the phone's web browser. The installed snooping software would be hidden and not visible to the actual user of the mobile phone,'' CCB officials said in an official note.