Portal hacked, Punjab government mulls linking farmers’ Aadhaar IDs, bank accounts

There are 10 lakh farmers, arhtiyas (those who facilitate the transaction betwixt a husbandman and existent buyer) and different entities registered with the department. As per unsmooth estimates, astatine slightest 7 lakh of these are farmers.

The authorities has swung into enactment aft the Punjab Police cyber compartment past period uncovered the alleged cyber fraud by arresting 5 people, 1 of whom owns a cyber cafe successful Sri Muktsar Sahib.

The Anaaj Kharid portal was allegedly compromised by a Muktsar-based hacker who siphoned disconnected Rs 25 lakh meant for astatine slightest 9 farmers arsenic outgo for procurement of their paddy during the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS) 2024. The hacker allegedly fraudulently registered a telephone fig with the portal and managed to divert the wealth belonging to the farmers to his accounts.

The Punjab authorities wants to guarantee that nary specified fraud takes spot successful the adjacent outgo season.

“With Aadhaar seeding, it volition not beryllium imaginable for hackers to compromise anyone’s accounts unless an OTP generated from UIDAI is shared with the hacker. The hacker who managed to compromise the portal had entree to information aft immoderate farmers and arhtiyas logged successful to the portal from his cyber cafe. We privation to extremity this benignant of manipulation,” an authoritative from the Food and Civil Supplies Department said.

Earlier, the farmers’ accounts were registered connected the portal aft verification by arhtiyas.

The MSP outgo fraud and however it came to light

The MSP outgo fraud came to airy aft farmers Gurmit Singh from Abupura, Jarmanjit Singh from Bolara and Sukhdev Singh from Thaitian colony complained to the section that they had not received their wealth days aft their paddy had been procured. While Gurmit was to get Rs 3.39 lakh, Jarmanjit was owed Rs 1.88 lakh, and Sukhdev, Rs 5.75 lakh.

“It was shocking arsenic the portal showed that the wealth was credited to them. But the accounts did not beryllium to them. All these years, the farmers were getting wealth into their accounts. This season, antithetic relationship numbers were added. After diverting the wealth into the hackers’ accounts, the records were changed to the original,” said an official.

The Punjab Police Cyber Crime Division uncovered the fraud by arresting Manish, Jasvir Singh, Angrej Singh and Balwinder Singh. Manish, who runs Janta Cyber Cafe successful Muktsar, besides utilized to record the income taxation returns of the arhtiyas, the constabulary said.

The constabulary teams allegedly recovered integer devices and routers utilized for the fraud. Preliminary investigations revealed that IP addresses were picked from the log-ins and the accused utilized a mobile fig and a mobile instrumentality to get OTPs for altering the slope accounts of farmers connected the Anaaj Kharid portal, the constabulary said.

While Rs 15 lakh was allegedly diverted to 2 accounts of IDBI Bank successful Moga, Rs 10.64 lakh was credited to an ICICI Bank relationship successful Sector 70 successful Mohali. After the alleged fraud took place, the section has withheld the payments of 58 arhtiyas worthy Rs 4.36 crore.

The constabulary person questioned the employees of the Food and Civil Supplies Department who were dealing with the portal and probe into the fraud is continuing.