Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists
16/06/2022
Wired.com / by Andy Greenberg
New details connect police in India to a plot to plant evidence on victims’ computers that led to their arrest.
Police forces around the world have increasingly used hacking tools to identify and track protesters, expose political dissidents’ secrets, and turn activists’ computers and phones into inescapable eavesdropping bugs. Now, new clues in a case in India connect law enforcement to a hacking campaign that used those tools to go an appalling step further: planting false incriminating files on targets’ computers that the same police then used as grounds to arrest and jail them.
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by Andy Greenberg / @a_greenberg (June 16):
A wild, appalling story: A group of hackers fabricated evidence on the PCs of Indian human rights activists who were then arrested for terrorism and jailed. Now researchers have found a direct link between those hackers and the police making the arrests.
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Fabricated evidence planted to implicate Elgaar activists, says US magazine
18/06/2022
The Telegraph / by Pheroze L. Vincent
Maharashtra govt and Centre have resisted the admission of the multiple revelations of hacking as evidence and consistently opposed bail in the case.
America’s Wired magazine has alleged links between Pune police and hackers who it says planted fabricated evidence on some of the accused in the Elgaar Parishad-Maoist links case, which witnessed the arrest of 16 activists, writers, academics and lawyers.
Earlier, two digital security firms in the US had revealed the planting of electronic evidence – claims that the prosecution has rejected, with the investigators ignoring calls to review the evidence.
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Security Researchers Claim Link Between Pune Police And Hacking Campaign Against Bhima Koregaon Accused
16/06/2022
The Wire / by The Wire Staff
The recovery email id and phone number on accounts of Wilson, Rao and Babu were allegedly linked to a Pune police officer.
Security researchers in the United States have claimed that they unearthed new evidence that links the Pune police to the hacking of e-mail accounts of activists Rona Wilson and Varavara Rao and Delhi University professor Hany Babu. This is the first time that the state’s involvement has been directly established in the case.
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Report links cop to hacking bid on Bhima accused
16/06/2022
Hindustan Times / by HT Correspondent
There are links between a Pune police official and a hacking campaign that targeted suspects in the Bhima Koregaon case, a report by news website Wired said on Thursday, citing information from an unnamed whistleblower from a company that provided email services to the targets.
The report is the latest in a series of clues that bring into question the provenance of the evidence used in the Bhima Koregaon case, in which several activists have been accused of terrorism through their alleged links to the extremist Maoist rebellion.
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Pune Police allegedly planted fake evidence on devices of Bhima Koregaon accused, reports Wired
16/06/2022
Scroll.in / by Scroll Staff
The recovery email id and phone number on accounts of Rona Wilson, Varavara Rao and Hany Babu were linked to a police officer, a cybersecurity firm has claimed.
A US-based cybersecurity company has claimed that the Pune Police hacked electronic devices owned by activists Rona Wilson, Varavara Rao and Hany Babu and planted fake evidence on them, reported Wired magazine in the US.
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Also read:
● The unravelling of a conspiracy: were the 16 charged with plotting to kill India’s prime minister framed? (The Guardian / Aug 2021)
● Explainer: Arsenal Report on Surendra Gadling (The Leaflet / July 2021)
● They were Accused of plotting to overthrow the Modi government – The evidence was planted, a new report says (Washington Post / Feb 2021)
