Institute head held for cyber fraud

CUTTACK: The Crime Branch has arrested  chairman of a Balasore-based technical institute along with an employee on charges of committing fraud to divert students to his own college during e-counselling for diploma in engineering courses for the 2010 academic session. The chairman of Jhadeswar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Balasore, Pramananda Samantray had allegedly hacked the accounts opened by the aspirants in a cyber cafe and fraudulently changed their preferences for institutes. Samantray and an employee of the institute have been arrested, ADG, CID-CB, Abhay said on Tuesday. With several cases of such frauds coming to light, the investigation had been handed over to the Cyber Crime Cell of the CID-CB. The investigations revealed that the computers at the Jhadeswar Institute and a private internet cafe were used to illegally change the preference of six candidates in its favour. As per the e-counselling procedure, students had to register their accounts in the website and submit their choice of stream and colleges of preference in a priority order. The submissions would then be locked in and they would be intimated on the availability in order of their preference.   The institute had devised a novel method to track the applications of the students. It had allegedly taken a cyber cafe at Balasore on rent and deployed its own staff there. When a student would come in, the staff on the pretext of assisting him would remember the password and the account details. When the candidate would leave, they would then log in and change the choice list of the colleges in their favour. They had done this in many cases but six have been established. The Cyber Crime Police has registered a case under sections 418/419/420 IPC/66 (C) of IT Act and forwarded the duo to court. A DSP is heading further investigations into the case.