50 sim cards recovered from hacker accused of Jio data breach

Maharashtra police, probing the case of alleged leak of customer data from India's newest telecom entrant - Reliance Jio, have recovered 50 SIM cards from the 35-year-old computer science dropout from Rajasthan, arrested in this connection.

The cards were recovered in Rajasthan's Churu district, from the house of Imran Chippa, a dropout of the Bachelor of Computer Science, a police official told PTI.

Police had earlier recovered a computer, mobile phone and other devices from Chippa, the official said.

"Most of the SIM cards recovered are of Reliance-Jio," Balsingh Rajput, SP (Maharashtra Cyber) said.

"We are interrogating Imran to ascertain the purpose for which he had obtained these cards", he said.

Chippa was produced in a local court in Jaipur, and was sent to custody of Cyber Police on transit remand, he said.

The quantum of data allegedly leaked will be known only when the computer hard disk, pen drive and other devices seized are analysed by the Forensic Science Laboratory, he said.

"It will take some time to know Chippa's modus operandi and the number of people involved in the data leak," the official said.

A resident of Sujangarh town, Chhipa had made the website Magicapk. He claimed to provide Jio user data through his website, police said.

However, Jio has said that the claims of the website were "unverified" and "unsubstantiated".

After the police complaint was lodged in Mumbai, Mumbai Police reached Churu after tracking the IP address and took Chhipa into custody last night.

Following the data leak, the domain of the website has been suspended.

A Mumbai Police team, led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Deepak Dhole, had reached Churu district after tracking the IP address, police said.

An analysis by the Maharashtra Cyber Police headed by Inspector General of Police Brijesh Singh led investigators to zero in on the location from where the suspected data breach had happened, he said.

Jio had said its subscriber data "is safe and maintained with highest level of security".

The company is one of fastest in the world to touch the 100 million subscriber mark within months of its launch in September 2016.