Estranged Husband Arrested For Hacking Wife’s Income Tax Account To Pay Lesser Maintenance

Lucknow: The greed to pay lesser alimony to his wife after divorce landed a man in Lucknow behind the bars. Cyber crime police of Lucknow has arrested a branch manager of a bank who was going through the divorce process. In order to pay lesser maintenance to his wife the bank officer allegedly misused his wife’s PAN card and tried forging his income tax account.

The case came to light on July 19 this year when Lucknow resident Soumya Gaur received OTP notification from Income Tax department for password reset. Soumya who teaches management was prompt to quickly check her account and inform the Income Tax department. On IT department suggestions she filed a complaint with national cyber crime portal. In her complaint she said an unidentified person tried to misuse her PAN card and hack into her Income Tax account.

“Thankfully I received both SMS and email from Income Tax department. I was shocked to see that someone was trying to change my Income Tax details. I immediately contacted all the authorities to check who is behind it,” Soumya told The420.in

The case was then handled by the cyber crime department which started collecting digital evidence. The investigation routed the police to victim’s estranged husband Akshat Vijay Banavalikar who is a bank employee. The IP address of the password request made matched with Akshat’s. He was arrested by the police for the offence.

The couple had filed for divorce in March this year and anticipating that Akshat will have to pay a huge amount as alimony he tried to forge Soumya’s details. Maintenance or alimony in simple words means an amount which a husband is obliged to pay to his wife either upon separation or divorce. The objective of providing maintenance to divorced women is to provide them with financial independence so that she can live life with convenience.

“Even if you are husband and wife or brother or sister any unauthorised access of personal accounts or misusing of IDs or documents is a crime. In this case we found the husband to be misusing his wife’s Income Tax account. As it was without the will and knowledge of the victim it amounts to hacking,” said Triveni Singh, Superintendent of Police, Cyber Crime.

As number of divorce cases in India is growing up such cases of manipulation of accounts and forging of documents will become more rampant.