The 31-year-old techie, Abhinav Srivastava, who has been arrested for allegedly illegally accessing Aadhaar data had initially told the police that he had done it just for kicks and to make an extra buck. But according to a report by the Times of India, further questioning has revealed that Abhinav had thoroughly researched the websites of international airports, state governments and the Indian railways as well.

The Bengaluru Cyber Crime Police, studied the four laptops and hard disk seized from Abhinav Srivastava. A preliminary study of these, revealed that he was meticulous in his work, the report adds.

An official in the investigating team told TNM that Abhinav considers himself an ethical hacker. 

“He has meticulously studied the government websites and even the websites of the Chinese government. He has studied how the airline booking system works and also the railway bookings,” the official said.

The officer said that the browser history was blank on all of in Abhinav’s laptops and that the forensic team is in the process of recovering the details. 

“We have approached the internet service providers and have sought the details of the sites he visited and also his online correspondence to ascertain who else is involved in this data theft,” the officer said.

Abhinav was employed with Ola and was arrested on August 1 for allegedly accessing Aadhaar data through the e-hospital server of National Informatics Centre. 

“The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) officials are slated to meet us by Tuesday and after taking their statements, it will be possible to know the impact on the UIDAI server. The team members are tracking down the people who downloaded the app Abhinav created,” the officer said.

Abhinav, who is from Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur, and residing in Yeshvanthpur was employed with Ola in Bengaluru. Ola has stated that it had never commissioned or was involved in such activity.

According to the CCB police, Abhinav had developed a mobile application named Aadhaar e-KYC verification for public download. As per the complaint, "Aadhar related information, which is legally housed by the NIC server was illegally and unauthorised accessed and used to support this mobile application."  

“He had tapped into the server in January and had downloaded data of 50,000 people. He had earned about Rs 40,000 in advertisement revenue through this application. There is suspicion that he has developed several other apps so far and he earned Rs 40,000 from advertisements,” the police added.