Three former employees of marketing company booked for stealing its private information

Gurugram: Three people, including a woman, were booked on Saturday for allegedly stealing the “source code of a software and proprietary material” of a private marketing

Gurugram: Three people, including a woman, were booked on Saturday for allegedly stealing the “source code of a software and proprietary material” of a private marketing company where they used to work. The police said that the three suspects allegedly tried to poach clients of the company in Udyog Vihar too.

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According to the police, the suspects resigned from the complainant company in November last year, after one of them alleged misbehaviour on behalf of the management. In a police complaint, the company alleged that after leaving the office, the suspects did not return their laptops which were provided to them by the management.

Tarun Sobhani, a representative of the company, alleged in the first information report (FIR) that when the company accessed the backup of the suspects’ emails and cloud storage drivers where client related information and their sales reports were hosted, it found that the suspects had “source code of the software and proprietary material of the company”. Sobhani said that none of the suspects had permission to access the source code and private information of the company.

“Having resigned from the company, the former employees have been found to contact the company’s clients, through their official email IDs, thereby misrepresenting themselves to be still being employed by the company,” Sobhani said in the complaint. He also alleged that the suspects were in touch with the employees of the company and trying to “poach” them.

“It is thus very clear that the former employees intend to offer services to the company’s clients, using the company’s own software / proprietary material / source codes, which they have obtained illegally and through unauthorised access of the company’s computer resources. Such overtures are a clear proof of the former employees’ malicious intent and future plans,” the complainant added.

A police official privy to the investigation said, “We are verifying the claims made by the company. The suspects are yet to be arrested. We are investigating the case.”

A case was registered under sections 420 (cheating) and 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 66b of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act at Cybercrime police station on Saturday.