Mumbai Crime: Man gets Rs 2 lakh phone bill, thanks to hackers

A cop shows the tab on which the outbox is full of the mysterious Japanese and Korean messages

A 29-year-old event manager is in shock after getting slapped with a bill of Rs 2 lakh for his two mobile numbers. Nagendar Singh, an event manager, registered a complaint with the Powai police after he found over 21,000 text messages in Japanese and Korean in the sent folder on his phone. Following this shock, Singh's health greatly deteriorated, and he is currently in hospital, battling dengue.

Singh told the cops that he had put both SIM cards in a Lenovo Yoga tab, and had been using them since December 2017 for work. "I used to pay my bills on time, but when I got my August bill, I was shocked to see it was for R2 lakh," he recalled. "When I went through my phone, I found that someone had hacked it and sent over 21,000 messages in Japanese and Korean. The texts were sent to international country codes 81 [Japan] and 90 [Turkey]. All the messages ended with the weblink https://sagawa.com," Singh told the police.

Powai police's Senior Inspector Anil Pophle told mid-day, "Prima facie, it seems that his phone was hacked, and several messages were sent abroad. We are investigating the case." An officer from Powai police station said, "We have registered an FIR against unidentified persons under Sections 43 and 66 of the Information Technology Act."

21k
No. of text messages that were sent to international numbers

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