A Netherlands-based software development company has filed a complaint with Noida Police alleging that employees of its Indian subsidiary in Noida, accessed its source code and sold it to a rival company based in Dubai, senior police officers said on Wednesday.
Based on the complaint, an FIR was registered against six people, including the former director of the company, under sections of cheating, IT Act and Copyright Act, the police said, adding that all the suspects are residents of Noida.
According to the complaint, it costs the company approx $20 crore and it took two years to develop the source code.
“However, employees of our Indian subsidiary, headquartered in Sector 127, Noida, sold the token to a Dubai-based company for illegal gains,” the complainant alleged.
“This company primarily builds software for customers in the manufacturing sector,” said the complaint filed by Akashdeep Sharma, a representative of the Netherlands-based company. The company’s engineers/staff create the source code for this software. The source code is an integral part of the software, and without it no one can create another program of this type. The Software and source code are the property of the Company, and the Company alone has the right to sell or lease copies thereof commercially.
It further said: “The suspects, in collusion, transferred the entire source code to another private Gitlab account under highly suspicious circumstances and from there tampered with and unauthorizedly copied the company’s source code and shared it with the Dubai-based company and other unknown persons.” . The suspects made unauthorized copies of the source code to further their collective conspiracy to harm the company and make illegal gains for themselves.
Noida Police said six individuals have been booked in the FIR. Except for one, the other five are employees of the Indian subsidiary, they added.
“The FIR has been registered under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), Section 66D of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act, 2008 and Section 63B of the Copyright Act, 1957 at Sector 126 police station,” Shakti said. Avasthi, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, Noida.
He said, “The investigation is ongoing, and a decision on arrests will be made later based on the evidence.”
The suspects mentioned in the FIR could not be immediately reached for comment.
