Shaleen ShahThe income tax (I-T) sleuths who carried out searches at the premises of Bollywood actresses Priyanka Chopra and Katrina Kaif, were aided by ‘hero’, a small yellow suitcase which copied voluminous data from the actor’s computers.
The recently procured mobile portable forensic lab of the department, fondly called ‘hero’, looks like a yellow suitcase and helps I-T officials copy and replicate huge data quickly.
The portable lab has now been sent to the I-T forensic laboratory here which is downloading the documents copied from the actors and will then print them.
"The hero has really lived to its expectations. The department is increasingly using it in high-value searches," I-T sources said.
Documents and data related to endorsements and investments were copied on to the portable forensic lab during the searches which will now be scrutinised, they said.
The I-T team that carried out the searches was also equipped with pre-wiped disks for imaging and cloning hard drives, portable labs for previewing computer hard disks, specially coated bags and tags to pack, label and transport the imaged and cloned data to its labs.
The ‘hero’ also has a technical name– Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device Diminutive Interrogation Unit (FREDDIE)– and was also used last year by the department while searching the premises of former Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi.
The investigative wing of the I-T department has started using these software platforms after taxpayers and evaders have increasingly started using high-end softwares like ‘logic bomb’ which deletes all files as soon as officials try to source information from the hardware.
[Source: www.dnaindia.com]
