Password leak: Cyber-crime accused granted bail

Claims thirty more employees knew the password.

LAHORE:

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday granted post arrest bail to an accused and cancelled interim bail of his accomplice in a case of leaking password of Warid Telecom’s Easy Load, which allegedly caused the company a loss of Rs47.75 million.

Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry ordered the release of the accused, Hasan Latif. His alleged accomplice, Ahmed Bilal Anwar, had been on interim bail but the judge cancelled the bail and issued orders for his arrest. Latif in his bail application had said that Mubarik Hasan Cheema, the Warid Telecom senior security executive, had registered an FIR against them with the Federal Investigation Authority on December 21, 2010, accusing them of leaking the password for Easy Load, their mobile phone credit transfer system. Latif said that the main accused in the case was Anwar.

He said he was an employee of the Ericson Mobile Company, which provided telecom services to Warid Telecom. He said he had been wrongly accused. He also said 30 other employees also knew the password and any of them could have leaked it. He said instead of questioning everyone who knew the password, the investigators had arrested just him.

He requested the court to grant him bail for having no link with the case. Earlier, Latif had submitted an application for bail before the sessions judge, who had dismissed it on January 29, 2011.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2011.