Rajkot Labour Room Cctv Hack Cyber Terror Case

February 17, 2025. Around 5 pm, a chilling video began circulating on social media. February 17, 2025. Around 5 pm, a chilling video began circulating on social media. It showed a nurse administering an injection to a female patient at a private body part. Police traced the video to a maternity hospital in Rajkot, about 220 km west of Ahmedabad. Over the next five months, they arrested eight men and booked them for cyber terrorism, a section usually applied in cases pertaining to national security and to protect critical national strategic assets from cyber attacks. How did such a video of a patient in a hospital end up online? Police began their probe at the hospital. The hospital in question is housed in a four-storey commercial building. Couples sit in joined metal chairs in the waiting room, many with medical reports in their hands. A video playing on a screen shows “success stories” of couples leaving the hospital with new-born babies in their arms. The hospital administrator recollected the shock of discovering the crime last year. “A patient had just gone into labour, and the staff was busy. In the middle of that, a reporter approached us and said footage of our hospital was being shown on the Internet. We were horrified… We didn’t know,” the administrator said. “We immediately went to the police station. The Rajkot City police told us they were already aware and an FIR had been registered by the Cybercrime Branch in Ahmedabad City. We had no facts, other than knowing that CCTV footage from our labour room was being sold online,” he said. But it wasn’t just one video, and not just one hospital. Investigators soon found that several clips from CCTV footage of women patients in the labour room were being sold on closed Telegram groups, with “trailer” clips advertised on YouTube for potential “buyers”. Prices ranged from Rs 800 to Rs 2,000, depending on the nature of the content. Staff and patients at the hospital were questioned for days, and CCTV footage was scanned for clues. “The police were here for three-four days,” the hospital administrator said. “They interviewed staff, took our electronic gadgets and spoke to patients… We cooperated, we even went to Ahmedabad a couple of times as part of the investigation. Eventually, they concluded that the CCTV system had been hacked from outside the hospital.” On February 18, 2025, the Ahmedabad City Cybercrime Branch found videos on three YouTube channels. They wrote to Google seeking details of the operators of the channels, and following a prompt response from Google, identified people based in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Teams were sent to both states, and three accused were apprehended. At a press conference on February 19, 2025, Ahmedabad City Police Joint Commissioner (JCP) Sharad Singhal, DCP (Cybercrime) Lavina Sinha, and DCP (Crime) Ajit Rajian announced that Prajwal Ashok Teli (23) had been arrested in Latur, Maharashtra, Praj Rajendra Patil (19) in Sangli, Maharashtra, and Chandraprakash Phoolchand (33) in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh.