UP constable, 3 private detectives held for selling phone call detail records

Three private detectives and a police constable were arrested by the Delhi police last week for selling phone call detail records of individuals for prices ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 5 lakh over the last two years.

The CDRs were allegedly collected by Narendra Choudhary, an Uttar Pradesh Police constable working in the surveillance cell of the Inspector General's office in Kanpur, who used the official email IDs of senior UP police officers to gather them from nodal agencies and mobile service providers, says the Hindustan Times. The private detectives used these CDRs to gather information for their clients.

Delhi Police joint commissioner of police (crime branch) Ravindra Yadav said that Choudhary had provided the private detectives with more than 500 CDRs over two years. He added that more details would emerge when the police constable was interrogated.

"Narendra's interrogation will unravel names of other clients. We suspect Narendra sold thousands of CDRs," said Yadav.

Choudhury had tried to hide his email trail from the cyber police by not actually sending the CDRs to anyone, but merely attaching them to email drafts that could be accessed by the private detectives after he shared the password, said Yadav.