Much-hailed tech whiz nabbed in RRB scam
LUCKNOW: Barely five years ago, as a 19-year-old tech whiz, Shivendu Madhav had the honour of sharing the stage with renowned scientist and former president APJ Abdul Kalam.
He went on to create one innovative website after another, one of which was even purchased by a US citizen two years back.
Cut to October 2014 and the same IT genius, now 24, was arrested by the UP Special Task Force ( STF) here i n Krishnanagar on Wednesday. The charge against him is very serious: Operating a fake website of Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), Bhopal, and duping gullible people after advertising jobs for different posts in the Railways.
“He is a genius and had pre- pared a blog— technozeast.com — at the age of 19. He used to write IT-related articles on the website. Impressed with the quality of his articles and their popularity, a professor at Texas University, USA, bought it for Rs 4 lakh,” Amit Pathak, senior superintendent of police (SSP), STF, told HT.
Having quit studies after Class 10, Madhav gained excellence in information technology (IT) and computers through online learning.
Within the past three-four months, he entered into the fraud business to procure fast money after coming in contact with two NGO workers in Varanasi — his present home.
He was arrested when he had come to meet a friend near Phoenix Mall in the state capital.
Sharing more details about Madhav’s illustrious past, Triveni Singh, additional SP, STF, said, “Madhav had prepared a search engine (tejguru. com) but failed to complete it due to financial issues. He also created an ad portal (cozli.com). He told us that a photograph of his alongside Kalam was once published in Digit magazine.” Madhav’s father is a renowned doctor based in Katihar, Bihar.
Singh said Madhav had a promising career before him, which he ruined after falling in bad company. “He prepared a fake RRB, Bhopal website and advertised 11,814 openings for different posts like ticket collector, trackman, helper and peon. He collected over Rs 13.5 lakh from 3,500 aspirants through online transaction facility,” said Singh. “We, however, managed to block the money transfer in the fraudsters’ bank accounts. It would soon be returned to the aspirants,” he added.
Singh said though Madhav, using his technical expertise, had made a supposedly foolproof plan STF managed to reach him using, ironically, some latest techniques.
“He had hosted the domain name of a fake website from Canada and no details of the website operators were present on the hosting server. Besides, he had mentioned a Mumbai-based payment gateway on the website for all online transactions,” said the cop.
Singh said two accounts, owned by two of Madhav’s accomplices in a private bank, have also been traced. “These were apparently used in the fraud,” he added. The duo went underground after Madhav’s arrest and police teams are making efforts to arrest them, said Singh.