‘big’ and how it was not redressed, SAP R&D unit’s India

MD Anirban Dey wrote anonymous mails to his own firm

SAP Labs

corporate corridors

FIR

Prashanth D Mallya

Cyber Crimes Act

Raghavendra Auradkar

Upset over an on-premises assault involving someoneThe city’s corporate world was rattled when news aboutIndia managing director Anirban Dey quitting the company came out last Thursday. The software giant attributed his sudden exit to “personal” reasons and thewere rife with speculation that he was heading to Infosys. But the real trigger has come as a shocker: Dey put in his papers after a probe by police into complaints against spamming pointed the needle of suspicion towards him!Dey, who is popular as Andy, is said to have acquired the pseudonym ‘slicitizen101’ (presumably standing for SAP Labs India Citizen 101) in the online world and had reportedly threatened to expose the alleged bunglings by a few Indian senior executives of the company through emails to SAP’s top management in Germany. Dey had been with SAP Labs since 2008 and had taken over as the MD of SAP Labs India in January 2013.SAP Labs is the research and development (R&D) division of SAP AG, the global leader in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. SAP Labs India is SAP AG’s third largest R&D centre in the world, with units in Bangalore and Gurgaon. It is managed separately from SAP India, the company’s subsidiary in this country.Dey’s exit, which was officially announced on Thursday, is a pointer to the machinations and manoeuvrings that happen behind the façade of corporate boardrooms. Bangalore Mirror has accessed documents, including copies of the mails sent by slicitizen101 between December 2013 and April 2014, a copy of the police complaint lodged by SAP Labs India, and theregistered by Mahadevapura police. Based on these documents and interactions with police officers, BM pieced the puzzle together.The action unfolded on May 30 this year when SAP Labs India senior legal counsel and company secretarylodged a complaint with the Mahadevapura police seeking a probe into the malicious and offensive mails sent to the company’s senior management.It read: “Of late, we have received frequent cases of spamming emails addressed to our German Board members which at times as well (sic) with untrue, fabricated and false content, which in the end is hurting our senior colleagues (sic) reputation. The attached mail is one of those mails received recently which had fabricated and false claims made and therefore we have to assume that these kind of mails are being sent with malicious intent. We had made an internal enquiry and found that these claims are bereft of any truth….We request you to take appropriate action under theand/or any other relevant laws.”The Mahadevapura police registered the case under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (Section 66-A; which relates to hacking) and started probing copies of the mails sent from the ID slicitizen101@gmail.com. A police officer told BM: “From the documents provided to us, we realised that the sender is an insider who had access to information that is restricted to a select few in the company. The sender was apparently trying to end some wrongs in the company and had been sending mails since December 2013 to SAP RAW, an employee grievance redressal cell in the company. The sender was trying to ensure that an assault on an employee that had taken place in the company premises was investigated properly, for which some at SAP Labs India were not ready. When it went to the extreme, he threatened to bring all these developments to the notice of their German Board members.”In fact, in one of the mails sent at 10:41 pm on January 9, 2014, with the subject line ‘Reporting an abuse’, slicitizen101 stated: “Crime is physically beating an employee inside the SLI campus (sic) does not matter whether he is guilty or innocent. Are you saying that this crime did not happen at all? Are you saying that the investigation of this crime already happened?” To this, a reply was received on January 15, 2014, at 12:11 pm stating: “Hi, can we meet face to face? Absolute confidentiality is ensured.” In reply, slicitizen101 wrote on January 19: “Sorry, I will never say who I am. I am disappointed how RAW is unable to investigate just because the person is big. Either you look into it or let me know that you can’t. I will write to Germany.”Sources in SAP Labs India said: “The threat of escalating the issue to German board members is what triggered alarm bells at the Bangalore office. They knew there was an insider who was threatening to explode and the only way to stop the person is by identifying him/her. So came the police complaint with allegations of spamming.”Mahadevapura police commenced by approaching Google to trace the sender’s IP address with co-ordinates of LAT: 12.97923169 and LONG: 77.71531034. Armed with Google’s inputs, the police checked with the service providers. They got a breakthrough on learning that the IP address used belonged to an internet connection provided by Airtel for a landline belonging to an apartment in Devarabisanahalli, off Outer Ring Road. The connection had been taken by a woman. When Mahadevapura sub-inspector Suresha G went to the flat, he was in for a surprise: The house belonged to Anirban Dey and the woman at the door was his wife!Subsequently, the police visited Dey in his office and questioned him over the mails. Mahadevapura police inspector J Gautam said: “We got to know that it was Dey who had sent the mails. Why, and whom he was pointing to, are yet to be ascertained.” The police said Dey had not committed any fraud and there is no offensive content in the mails that he had sent. “He wanted to hide his identity as the managing director, so he created slicitizen101. Dey apparently felt that the SAP RAW probe was not moving in the right direction and was being done to favour a few employees. He wanted to ensure that the wrong person is not punished. We are continuing the investigation and will find out what exactly happened.”Confirming the developments, City Police Commissionersaid: “SAP Labs India had come to us with a petition and they wanted to know who was the stranger sending mails to their management. During investigation it was found that Anirban Dey was sending the mails. We are further investigating the case to unearth more details.”Dey reportedly told police that he was sending mails without any wrong intention. The cops, who too were shocked by his resignation, said: “Dey was not kept in the loop by the company when the police complaint was lodged. Maybe he did not like what had happened.”Sources said a few of the company’s top brass had apologised to Dey for not having kept him in the loop while seeking the intervention of the police. “They told him that they wanted to ensure the company’s reputation is not affected at any point, and hence they filed the complaint. A few German board members also came down to the city and had a meeting with top officials of the company and persuaded Dey against taking extreme measures. But Dey decided to quit. He was not convinced by the damage-control measures and hence decided to quit.”When contacted, a SAP Labs India spokesperson said about Anirban Dey, “We cannot divulge any details of his contact information since he has left the company.”