Hyderabad: 4 ex-employees of pharma firm held for data theft

Hyderabad: The Cybercrime sleuths of Cyberabad on Tuesday arrested four persons for committing data theft from a pharmaceutical company and manufacturing the same products at Visakapatnam fraudulently.

The accused are identified as Gunturu Srikanth Reddy (Medchal), Mekala Krishna Reddy (Medipally), Mekala Venkat Reddy (Miriyala) and S Yogeeswara Rao (Vishakapatnam).

According to Cyberabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar, the said pharma company's senior executive M Koteshwara Rao lodge a complaint with the police stating that their company is into production of bulk drugs and pharmaceutical products in Hyderabad and other cities by using a unique technology which is the intellectual property of their company.

He further stated that the company employed Mekala Krishna Reddy in 2009 as Deputy Manager (Production), Mekala Venkat Reddy in 2010 as chemist and Gunturu Srikanth Reddy in 2013 as Business Development Manager.

While working the accused Srikanth Reddy resorted to malpractices resulting in loss and damage to the company.

The management removed him from the company in 2017. Since he left the company he bored grudge against the company and the management, and in order to damage the company he hatched a plan and instigated the accused Krishna Reddy to get the data of some of the products manufactured by the complainant company.

To take a revenge on the company, Srikanth asked the other accused to transfer details of some drugs manufactured in the complainant's company and lured them to join his company with a huge hike.

Later all the accused joined the company of Srikanth Reddy at Visakhapatnam in 2019. The accused has manufactured some of the products of the complainant company at Atchyutapuram and Parawada in Visakhapatnam and supplied them to M/s Precise Chemi Pharma India Limited in Navi Mumbai and other customers.

Police Commissioner said during the course of investigation they have found that the accused has committed theft of confidential process data.