I Was Offered An Aadhaar Master Software For ₹2,500

On January 4, Jalandhar-based journal-ist Rachna Khaira broke what could be the scoop of the year.

- Anita Babu

She was tipped off about alleged unauthorised access to the Aadhaar database, which stores the demographic details and biometric information of more than 1.19 billion Indians. Aadhaar was a technological marvel for most Indians till then, thanks to relentless promotion by the government. But, soon after the report was published in The Tribune, it began to be associated with privacy violations and is being perceived with increased scepticism. Khaira talked to THE WEEK about the investigation and the events that followed. Edited excerpts:

How was the story planned and executed?

Though we were aware of the Supreme Court case, the story was not planned even a day before it was published. That’s the beauty of the story.

Bharat Bhushan Gupta, the ‘village-level entrepreneur’ who told me about the unauthorised access, claims that he had got the access on December 29. Once he was aware about the unauthorised access, he tried to bring it to the notice of the UIDAI, but made little headway. He then approached his friends in the media, but somehow the story was not done. Then, he contacted The Tribune. I was at his place at 10am the next morning. And, we managed to crack the whole story, including statements from the officials by around 2:30pm. It was not planned.

What do you think about UIDAI’s reponse, despite you keeping them in loop about your story?

The UIDAI seems to have got confused, because it was the first time one of us highlighted this issue so prominently. Initially, they thought that an FIR would keep us quiet. But, they didn’t anticipate the kind of support national and international media were going to offer. UIDAI kept on denying one thing after the other.