How safe are the networks? Team set up to review, US woman in focus

Taking note of the unprecedented breach in the computer network of the National Security Council Secretariat, a committee has been constituted under a joint director of the Intelligence Bureau to review the cyber security status of all agencies and departments dealing with sensitive information. It’s learnt that the committee will function under the JD (Security) and will have representatives from other agencies.

As reported by The Sunday Express on July 2, the co-ordinator of the forum from the Indian side, Mukesh Saini, a former Navy commander, is being questioned. He quit the NSCS a few months ago and joined a leading US software firm in India. Ujjwal Dasgupta, Director of Computers in RAW, has been asked not to come to office and NSCS systems analyst S S Paul has been arrested.

Paul is believed to have passed on information to Rosanna Minchew, apparently an American diplomat posted in the US Embassy, who left the country early last month. It is alleged that Saini introduced Minchew to Paul.

Meanwhile, sources said that after Paul’s questioning, a team of police officers has been sent to Kolkata where the US woman is reported to have stayed in a hotel in September 2005 while Paul was in his house at Thakurpukur in Behala. Both had left for Kolkata on September 22, police said, and stayed for four days there. — with Rahul Tripathi