Two college students - one from Telangana and the other from Gujarat - were taken into custody for sending six distinct threats via email to Mukesh Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Industries. According to the authorities, both students appear to have been mischievous in this case.
According to the police, the primary culprit, Rajveer Khant, 21, of Gujarat, wrote five emails between October 27 and November 1 using the email address [email protected] over a virtual private network (VPN).
Khant raised his demand from £2 million to40 million when the entrepreneur failed to reply to his emails. The other student has been identified as Ganesh R. Vanpardhi (19) of Telangana. According to authorities, he wrote one email - the sixth threat email in this instance - from his email address after reading about threats in the media. £50 million was his demand. Vanpardhi appeared in court and was detained by the police until November 8.
While Khant was arrested by the Mumbai crime branch, Vanpardhi was held by the Gamdevi police. The crime branch has seized Khant’s desktop and two mobile phones he used in the crime. “Khant believed he would not be caught and tried to challenge the investigating agencies. He had gone through the dark web to get information and searched at least 650 websites for almost a week before creating the ID in the name of ‘Shadab Khan’ that was used,” a police officer said.
Police said Khant is an internet buff. He was tracked with the help of digital footprints he had left without his knowledge. “He had used proton mail (end-to-end encrypted email service and Mailfence(secured and encrypted email service) to send the threats. Khant used a virtual private network (VPN) which showed the IP address in Belgium,” an officer said.