Pune:
IT professionals in troubled marriages are hacking into their spouse's email account for proof of extramarital affair or salary, say lawyers and cyber experts.
Cyber experts say a growing number of cases have come to light where couples are hacking into each other's email accounts to collect evidence for divorce. And some are going a step further by fabricating electronic evidence for early separation.
In one case, an IT professional sent a fabricated email to an unknown person from his wife's account to prove that she was in an extramarital relationship. The forgery came to light during cross-examination.
In another case, a woman got irritated by her husband's attitude of ignoring her emails demanding alimony and found a way of monitoring his account. The smart techie wife registered with a website which provided her the exact time when her husband opened her email. This made it impossible for him to deny that he had not read her mails.
In yet another case, a man managed to get a fake salary slip to show a lower income so that he would not have to pay high alimony, but the wife hacked into his account to get the printout of his original salary slip.
Niranjan Reddy, founder and CTO of NetConclave Systems, has handled a couple of such cases.
"In most cases spouses just forget to change the password when the process of separation starts, and in many cases even if they change it, the other partner manages to hack the password," said Reddy.
Lawyers also claim that couples on the verge of separation are increasingly resorting to hacking techniques to score on each other.
"No good lawyer would advise the litigants to hack into each other's accounts, but we are coming across many litigants who come to us already in possession of sheets of conversation wherein it becomes clear that the other person is having a relationship outside of marriage that goes beyond mere friendship," said Advocate Ajit Kulkarni.
According to lawyers in the city, 30 per cent of all divorces that happen in the city every year are among couples working in the IT sector, and 50 per cent of them use hacking techniques to collect electronic evidence against each other.
"Gen Next relies on the Internet for almost everything it does, right from online banking to shopping, so when it is time to gather electronic evidence there are growing cases where in couples are also relying on Internet," said Advocate Abhay Apte.
Advocate Pratibha Ghorpade said, "In many cases people meet on social networking sites and choose to marry without checking each other's background, and when it is time for separation they once again resort to the Internet and submit sheets of conversations between their spouse and the man or the woman who has allegedly jeopardised the marriage."