Man held on charge of job fraud in Kochi
According to the police, the accused allegedly pulled off the fraud through impersonation by using the Aadhaar card and address of a person from Kozhikode. He also allegedly misused the account number of a job applicant who approached his firm and conducted the transactions through it. Reportedly, he collected money from all the victims by promising to issue their visas by April 2025. He then allegedly shut down his firm and went into hiding.
The Puthencruz police managed to track him down despite the misleading address. He used to travel by bus alone to avoid detection. He slipped out of his rented house at Vengola one night after realising that the police had launched a probe. Since then, he had been living with his family at Thiruvilwamala in Palakkad. The police said that he was the key accused in the 2009 Ajaz murder case and had been imprisoned till 2018.
A team led by Puthencruz DySP V.T. Shajan and Inspector N. Gireesh made the arrest.
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Mint
3 hours ago
- Mint
China's giant new gamble with digital IDs
IT WAS IN 1984, of course, that police stations in China started issuing national ID cards to those over the age of 16. Citizens still need them to travel, pay taxes or gain access to public services. Now the Communist Party wants to cross another Rubicon. On July 15th the government will launch 'digital IDs" for use on the internet, shifting responsibility for online verification from private firms to the government. This is a potentially enormous step change in the state's control over data. It augments China's radically different approach to managing and surveilling the digital lives of its citizens. And it may alter who captures the profits generated from the online economy and even change the evolution of artificial intelligence in China. Under the new scheme people obtain a digital ID by submitting a raft of personal information, including scans of their faces, to the police via an app. They can then use it to register and log in to other apps or websites. A pilot went live a year ago and 6m people signed up. Currently voluntary, it may not remain so for long. Officials and state-run media are pressing citizens to sign up in the name of 'information security". China's 1.1bn internet users are in their sights. Some $1.3trn of market capitalisation is tied up in the big Chinese internet firms that cater to this huge customer base, from Alibaba to Meituan and Tencent. The state already tries to maintain a tight grip on what happens on the web. The government maintains the 'great firewall" through its control over telecoms infrastructure. It blocks hundreds of thousands of sites, including foreign news outlets, search engines and social media. But the system is multilayered and fiddly. Before posting a comment, playing an online game or paying for a takeaway, Chinese must register with the company running the service using their real name. This way the state partially outsources the job of surveillance. Last year the police say they punished 47,000 people who spread 'rumours". Firms help with gusto. Weibo, an X-like site owned by Sina Corp, uses a combination of blocked keywords and armies of censors to keep its 600m users in line, for example. The digital ID is an evolution of this set-up. Companies will know much less about who their users are from now on. Instead the IDs will allow people to log in to websites or apps without revealing their personal details to firms, which will see just an anonymised stream of digits and letters. Internet platforms can still censor users and report troublemakers—but only the police will hold all users' details. In some ways it is surprising that China, a forceful surveillance state, did not roll out digital IDs earlier. Dozens of countries have versions of one, including Australia and Britain, although their IDs are just used for access to government services, and are not run by the police. India began work on its vaunted Aadhaar programme back in 2009. So why is China doing this now? In the short term the scheme is meant to prevent consumer harm. Many Chinese are deluged with spam phone calls because their personal details have been sold to third parties. A lot of data also leak to gangs of telecoms fraudsters, whose scams cost China billions of yuan a year. 'It's like the government has sent us a bullet-proof vest for our personal information!" said one excited state-media journalist, in a video encouraging people to sign up. Critics fear the ID will turbocharge snooping. It may, for instance, help the police assemble a list of all the websites and apps each person uses. They could probably already get this information with a few phone calls, but the new scheme could make things more convenient. Data from the digital IDs might in the future be plugged into a new, more comprehensive online-surveillance system. When the scheme was first announced last year it created an online backlash. Lao Dongyan, a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, called it a 'ruse" on Weibo. Then her comments were scrubbed and her account was temporarily suspended. In the long term the digital ID is part of a far more ambitious vision, with the state taking firmer, more centralised control over the vast data flows the economy creates. In part this is motivated by national-security concerns. In the wrong hands—say, of foreign spies—personal data could be used for disinformation campaigns or cyberattacks. It could also be used to train AIs so as to glean insights on China's population. Economic opportunity underlies the vision, too. State planners say data is a factor of production, alongside labour, capital and land. They want to avoid it being hoarded inside companies and make it available for widespread use and trading. Local governments have built data exchanges to allow it to be monetised and traded between state agencies, state-owned enterprises and private companies. In Shenzhen, a tech hub in China's south, firms can buy data on how consumers use power from the national grid, for example. A national data-exchange is in the works. And in June the State Council, China's cabinet, announced new rules to prevent data being siloed by competing government departments. This all has implications for the rents derived from China's torrents of data and who gets them. In principle the digital ID harms the interests of private-sector internet platforms—not that the stockmarket seems to have noticed. The calm belies the government's capabilities. In recent years it has clobbered data-hoarding titans in other industries. In 2021 Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba, a tech giant, was forced to share its consumer-credit data with China's central bank. That year Didi, a ride-hailing firm, angered regulators by listing on the New York Stock Exchange despite their concerns that its data might be exposed. In 2022 it was fined 8bn yuan ($1.2bn) and forced to delist for 'illegally collecting millions of pieces of user information" and processing data in a way that threatened 'national security". Centralised data flows may supercharge China's AI initiatives. Chinese firms are prevented from buying American-designed AI chips, which are the most powerful in the world. But they could still try to find a competitive edge by feeding their algorithms more and higher-quality data as Lee Kai-fu, a Taiwanese tech investor, has argued. One area where masses of data have already helped Chinese companies to the bleeding edge is facial-recognition technology, thanks to the millions of surveillance cameras Chinese officials have set up across cities. For all its techno-optimism about data, though, China's government has a poor record of managing it. Officials are often badly paid and looking for ways to make more money—for instance, by selling valuable information. And practices can be lax. In 2022 a hacker stole 1bn personal records from the Shanghai police by lifting them from an unsecured database. Scandals like this might have made Chinese people more wary of government schemes like digital IDs. Fortunately, China's ever-watchful tech firms stepped in: reports of the theft were censored.
Indian Express
3 hours ago
- Indian Express
Muzaffarnagar police issue notices to 6 people over ‘forced Aadhaar, caste checks' on Kanwar vendors
Muzaffarnagar police on Tuesday issued notices to six members of Chatrapati Shivaji Sena, a group led by Swami Yashveer Maharaj, for allegedly conducting unauthorised Aadhaar and caste verifications of eatery owners along the Kanwar pilgrimage route, officials said on Tuesday. Station House Officer (Nai Mandi police station) Dinesh Chandra told The Indian Express that notices were sent to Sumit Bajrangi, Rohit, Vivek, Sumit, Sunny and Rakesh Datiyana, all residents of Muzaffarnagar. 'We are identifying more people involved in the campaign. The investigation is on,' he said. According to the police, the notices, dated June 28, referenced a viral video showing the group inspecting identity and birth certificates at Pandit Jee ka Dhaba on National Highway-58. 'It is to notify you that you were checking the Aadhaar card and other birth related documents of people running eateries and hotels along the National Highway-58 without informing the administration. A video of the same has surfaced on social media,' read the notice. The statement also directed the individuals to submit a written answer for their actions within three days as to why there should not be an action taken against you, read the notice. On June 28, a video of a man identified as Gopal, a worker at Pandit Jee Ka Dhaba, purportedly went viral on social media in which he alleged that a group of men asked him to get naked to confirm his religion. 'They came and checked my Aadhaar card and then removed my pants. They were checking my religion,' Gopal is heard telling in the viral video. However, when The Indian Express contacted the Muzaffarnagar police, to see if they had received a complaint from Gopal, the police said that he was yet to submit a written complaint. Sumit Bajrangi, a local Shivaji Sena leader, defended the checks as part of a campaign aimed at ensuring eateries use names matching their owners' faiths. He said they found Pandit Jee Vaishno Bhojnalaya registered under a Muslim name and demanded consistency. 'At Pandit Dhaba, the QR code is under a Muslim name, while the hotel has a Hindu name. We have no issue with the owner, but the hotel should reflect his Muslim name. A Hindu name won't be accepted, and Yashver Jee will protest,' Bajrangi said. Neetika Jha is a Correspondent with The Indian Express. She covers crime, health, environment as well as stories of human interest, in Noida, Ghaziabad and western UP. When not on the field she is probably working on another story idea. On weekends, she loves to read fiction over a cup of coffee. The Thursday Murder club, Yellow Face and Before the Coffee Gets Cold were her recent favourites. She loves her garden as much as she loves her job. She is an alumnus of Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. ... Read More
Hindustan Times
4 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
SC grants 4-week bail extension to Nitish Katara murder convict
The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a four-week extension of interim bail given to Vikas Yadav, the son of former member of Parliament DP Yadav undergoing life term in the 2002 Nitish Katara murder case. Vikas Yadav is serving life term for abducting and killing Nitish Katara in February 2002. (HT Archive) The court also directed him to surrender after four weeks, saying that he will not be entitled to any further extension of bail on the ground of his mother's ailment. Further, the condition of his bail requiring him to remain confined in his house was modified and he is now allowed to accompany his mother to her hospital visits. A bench of justices MM Sundresh and K Vinod Chandran, passed the order on an application filed by Yadav seeking extension of his bail granted by the top court on April 24. This is the fourth bail extension granted by the court. On past three occasions – May 8, May 19 and June 17, bail was extended to facilitate his mother's spinal operation that took place on May 25. 'We are inclined to extend the bail granted by four weeks making it clear that no further extension on medical ground will be provided. Any application for extension (of bail) can only be filed after surrender,' the bench said. Senior advocate S Guru Krishna Kumar, appearing for Yadav, said the petitioner should not be barred from seeking extension of interim bail on other grounds. His bail was supposed to expire on July 1. The application filed by Yadav pointed out that the Delhi high court order upholding his conviction in Nitish Katara case in 2015, had slapped a fine of ₹ 50 lakh against him. To arrange the same, Yadav stated in the application that he required to dispose immovable properties located in different states, which is a time-consuming and legally intricate process. He pointed out that he does not possess an Aadhaar card as he has remained in jail for past 23 years. Additional solicitor general (ASG) Archana Pathak Dave appearing for the Delhi government informed the court that initially while granting bail, the court was told that his mother needs to be operated. Presently, she said, the operation is over and the petitioner's mother is undergoing physiotherapy. Yadav stated that after undergoing operation, his mother developed serious post-operative neurological complications such as severe radiating pain, numbness in both lower limbs, weakness, and impaired mobility. Krishna Kumar said, 'In these critical circumstances, the presence and support of the petitioner, being the elder son, is indispensable.' Advocate Vrinda Bhandari appearing for Nilam Katara, mother of Nitish Katara, pointed out that no relaxation should be granted to Yadav as due to the petitioner's influence and power, the trial was shifted out of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi. 'So long as he is not committing any offence, what is the problem. If he violates the condition, the bail will be cancelled,' the bench observed, maintaining its order of relaxing the bail condition. While granting him bail on April 24, the top court had directed Yadav to furnish bail bond of ₹ 1 lakh with a surety of like amount and imposed a condition asking him to remain confined to his home in Murad Nagar in Ghaziabad while reporting to the local police station during the period of bail. In October 2016, the top court had upheld the conviction against Yadav and others in the 2002 Katara murder with a further direction to consider his remission on expiry of 25 years. The case pertains to the abduction of Katara from a marriage party on the intervening night of February 16 and 17, 2002, and then killing him over his alleged relationship with Bharti Yadav, Vikas's sister. In 2006, the top court shifted the trial of the case from Ghaziabad to Delhi on a petition moved by Nilam Katara. In July 2011, a Delhi court awarded life term to all the accused. This decision was upheld by the Delhi high court in 2015 and later by the Supreme Court in October 2016.
