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Indian police arrest two engineers for cyber theft

Two computer engineers have been arrested for stealing computer data from a private firm in Calcutta, police said Monday.

"The two engineers have been booked on Friday night on charges ranging from tampering with documents, illegally accessing, copying and damaging data in a computer," Banibrata Basu, head of Calcutta Police's detective unit, said.

This was the first case of a person being booked under the recent Information Technology Act, which deals with cyber crime, he added.

The two engineers, both in their late twenties, were working with a Calcutta-based business firm, which compiled medical case histories sent by doctors from overseas over the Internet.

Basu said the engineers had allegedly copied the documents stored in the private firm's computers and then set up a business of their own.

The police raided the office of the two engineers following a complaint by their former employer, officials said, seizing two computers, some CD ROMs and floppy discs.

Basu said the engineers could be imprisoned for three years and fined up to Rs 100 million ($2.2 million) if proved guilty in court.

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