Local authorities announced that the police of the state of Gujarat in India arrested several people in a case involving hacking of the video surveillance system in hospitals with the aim of obtaining recordings of patients and their subsequent sale on the internet. The arrest of Rohit Sisodia, a resident of Delhi, led to the total number of arrested individuals rising to seven.
The cybercrime department in the city of Ahmedabad stated in its announcement that Sisodia converted hacked video recordings from surveillance cameras into QR codes and sold them to an alleged contractor, which subsequently shared the videos via YouTube and Telegram channels. The criminal case was registered on February 17 after videos featuring women who had undergone childbirth in the maternity ward of the hospital were found on several YouTube and Telegram channels that required a paid subscription.
The police also arrested six individuals, including a hacker named Barret Damilia from Surat and the owner of the YouTube channel Pradjavala Teli, residing in Latur, Maharashtra. The police informed the channel "News18" that Damilia, a graduate of the trade faculty, hacked the video surveillance system in the maternity room of a hospital in Rajkot and edited the recordings of Sisodia.
Some of the videos were later uploaded to three YouTube channels, including one belonging to Teli, with a description that included a link to a group on Telegram. According to the statement, participants in the Telegram group charged a fee of 2000 rupees (approximately 90 US dollars) for each video. According to the former maternity ward in Rajkot, it is suggested that Damilia and his partner Raidan Peraira hacked around 50,000 surveillance cameras in hospitals, offices, schools, colleges, and even in monitoring cameras in hospital wards, as stated by the deputy commissioner of police for cybercrime, Lavina Senkha. All seven suspects have been detained on charges of organizing a criminal conspiracy and espionage in violation of the law on electronic terrorism.