Bengal tablet scam: Cyber crooks edited data of students on govt portal
Times of India | 17 November 2024
123 Kolkata: The preliminary multi-agency investigations into funds irregularities under Taruner Swapno scheme indicate that cyber criminals managed to edit bank details uploaded by various state-run school authorities on the central portal — managed by the school education department — to siphon off the money meant for students to purchase tablets.
A Sarsuna school, for example, uploaded the students' bank account data by 10.30 am on Aug 28 only to find post-midnight that the data had been edited. Before the school could flag it, the direct benefit transfer (DBT) already took place. As part of the ongoing raids, one more person — who illegally received Rs 10,000 cash (the grant allocated for each student under the scheme) — was arrested from Malda on Saturday. Multiple police teams have fanned out to trace these cyber criminals, who have past antecedents of hacking govt portals in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Delhi. Sources from Lalbazar said the probe so far has revealed that the school education office in Bikash Bhavan provides a school code and password to all govt schools across the state.
These are used to log in and conduct various transactions with the education department. The initial school code and password were never changed by some schools, making it easy for the frauds to hack their school pages, police said.
Police claimed that out of 1.6 million students , hackers were able to successfully change the account numbers of 2,018 students. Police sources also said that 10 schools filed complaints at local police stations in Jadavpur, Kasba, Sarsuna, Beniapukur, Maniktala, Jorabagan, Bhawanipur, Sarsuna, and Golf Green.