[Reader-list] PAN masala!

[SPACE]

More on 49A and the sarkari monsters. serves them right, no?

o o o o o o

PAN counter at paan shop: Two arrested 
 
Express News Service 
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=113925
New Delhi, January 13: 

When some people who needed PAN cards went to the paan shop at the
income-tax office's canteen at IP Estate, they weren't there by
mistake. The owner, Vinod Kumar, had allegedly promised them PAN
numbers and cards. He was, the police said, helped by a freelance data
entry operator, Amit Sangwan, at the I-T office. Both were arrested
yesterday by the Crime Branch after I-T officials tipped them off. The
cards were fake, made after tampering with the information of genuine
account holders in the database, the police said.

This has put a question mark over the security of the information of
account holders in the I-T Department. Sangwan, the police alleged,
had unlimited access to senior officials' access codes to the
database. He is one of several freelance data entry operators working
at the I-T Office in Central Revenue Building. These operators, the
police say, are paid directly by the I-T officials.

 
 
Sangwan had worked in different I-T departments for the past three
years. DCP, Crime Branch, Tajendra Luthra said he was substituting the
names in existing PAN accounts with the names of his 'clients'. Those
who bought the cards were unaware that they were fake. Officials have
detected 50 cases.

''Because these accounts had been altered in the database itself, it
was difficult to detect the fraud,'' said Luthra.

The police claim to have recovered from Vinod Kumar PAN forms, stamps
and other documents.

Income Tax officials, however, said genuine PAN account holders need
not worry. ''The central database, which is accessible only to a
select few top officials, and not at the regional level, remains
unaffected. The scamsters were able to access only the regional
database,'' said S S Khan, Director, I-T, Systems. He said it was his
department which first detected the scam a week ago while comparing
the two databases.

''The scamsters were misusing a facility in the database for altering
names and addresses of PAN account holders and selecting accounts
which had not been in use for some time. This facility has now been
withdrawn,'' said Khan.

He said cyber-security at the I-T Department was foolproof but the
issue of private data entry operators accessing the database was
beyond his purview.