Fake email id of Tata Hospital director created; police begin probe

Mumbai: Cops are investigating a case where an unidentified person created a fake email address of Tata Memorial Centre’s director and sent out emails to the staff pretending to be him

Mumbai: Cops are investigating a case where an unidentified person created a fake email address of Tata Memorial Centre’s director and sent out emails to the staff pretending to be him.

Cyber crime

According to the police, the technical officer of the centre’s IT department - Manoj Chavan, received an email on April 19 from an id ‘ceo@inlinebiz.site’.

The email read, “Can I have a quick moment..... please drop me your WhatsApp contact when you are available ...thanks Regards DRA Badwe, director.”

The id was in the name of director Dr Badwe, who is currently in the United States of America for a working visit.

Since Chavan knew Dr Badwe’s email id, he found the email suspicious and contacted him immediately. Dr Badwe informed him that he had not sent any email.

Chavan then contacted other employees and discovered that the same email was sent to other employees as well. He informed everyone not to respond to the email and informed the security department, the officer added.

The Bhoiwada police have registered a case under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act and started an investigation.

All branches of Tata Hospitals across India fall under the Tata Memorial Centre, which is a head office in Parel.

A police officer said, “The process of writing to the email service provider has already been initiated to get the details, including the internet protocol (IP) address, of the email sender.”

Dr Badwe was not available for comment. Upon investigation, it was found that in September 2020, two fake email ids of Dr Badwe were created by an unknown person.

Emails from the bogus accounts were sent to Dr Badwe’s senior colleagues, requesting them ‘favours’, to ruin his reputation.

A similar incident happened with the chief executive officer of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) Dr P Anbalagan, an IAS officer. A fraud email in his name was sent to 77 officers of the corporation asking them to send money for ‘urgent’ work.