Police fail to retrieve data from Sirsa dera hard discs

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 3

The Haryana Police have failed to retrieve data from 65 hard discs seized from the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa after the conviction of its head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case.

Even the state-of-the-art Digital Investigation, Training and Analysis Centre (DITAC) set up in Gurugram has failed to retrieve the data from the discs.

Sirsa SP Simardeep Singh admitted that efforts by the district police to get the data retrieved by sending it to various laboratories had not met with any success because the discs were tampered with before being dumped.

“The DITAC of the state police has said the data cannot be retrieved as the discs are badly damaged,” he said.

The DITAC, a first-of-its-kind centre in the country, was set up last year to improve the capabilities of the police in solving cyber crime cases.

The centre has a state-of-the-art cyber forensic laboratory equipped with high-end tools, high-tech training facilities to handle cyber-related crimes more efficiently and a social media monitoring lab equipped with the latest technological gadgets.

After Ram Rahim’s conviction that was followed by violence in Panchkula and Sirsa, the police had quizzed the sect’s IT head Vineet Kumar since most of the hard discs installed in computers were found to be changed recently.

When he failed to give convincing replies, he was arrested and interrogated about the fate of original hard discs and CCTV cameras installed at the main “pandal” of the dera headquarters to know who instigated Premis before and after the conviction.

Based on his revelations, the police had recovered 65 hard discs hidden in a tubewell room in fields of the dera. The hard discs were badly damaged as these were ostensibly hit with some heavy object before being dumped.

“We are still trying to retrieve the data by sending them to several agencies and forensic laboratories,” the Sirsa SP said.