Updated: Wed, 03 Dec 2025 01:07 (IST) The first case of cyber attack has come to light in Uttar Pradesh, in which documents worth Rs 4 crore have gone missing from the Public Works Department (PWD) of Kanpur. Read more Ritesh Dwivedi, Jagran, Kanpur. Cyber ​​attack: For the first time in Uttar Pradesh, a serious case of cyber attack on the e-tendering process has come to light. It is alleged that once PWD participated in the tender worth about Rs 4 crore, all the documents of the company suddenly disappeared from the Prahari application. Expressing fear of cyber attack, Durgesh Singh Chauhan, owner of the firm Varad Enterprises, has given a letter of complaint to the PWD headquarters in Lucknow as well as the office of DCP East, in which he is acting. Durgesh Singh Chauhan, owner of Varad Enterprises, said that on November 28, the public works department floated tenders worth around Rs 4 crore for road construction and repair work in Ghatampur (Kanpur city) and Bhognipur, Sikandra and Rasulabad areas of Kanpur Dehat. His firm Varad Enterprises applied for participation in six tenders by uploading all the documents within the stipulated time limit through Prahari App. For this, a fee of around Rs 40 lakh was also deducted from the online account, but as the bidding process progressed to the final stage, the entire data of his firm suddenly disappeared from the application, automatically excluding his firm from the e-tendering process. Remove Advertisement Read Only News Victim Durgesh claims that this well-planned cyber attack was carried out so that his firm could be thrown out of the auction process. In this case he gave a letter of complaint to the engineers of PWD head office. Along with this, a complaint letter was given to the office of DCP East Satyajit Gupta and a demand was made for investigation by cyber cell. He alleged that some unknown element interfered in the e-tendering process and deleted the documents uploaded in the application. According to him, this irregularity only came to light after the online process was completed on 28 November. However, DCP East Satyajit Gupta said that he has not received the complaint letter, after receiving the letter, investigation will be done and action will be taken. The IT cell of PWD headquarters has started investigation in this case. PWD headquarters also considered the incident very serious. Headquarter Superintending Engineer Praveen Kumar Bangdi said that after taking cognizance of the complaint, instructions were given to the IT cell to investigate. He admitted that this type of cases came to light for the first time in e-tendering in UP. The process is technically very secure, so the possibility of sudden disappearance of documents does not occur under normal circumstances. Therefore, the matter is thoroughly investigated. He said that Superintendent Engineer Chandrashekhar, in-charge of the IT cell of the headquarters, is himself investigating the matter from every aspect. The team is trying to find out whether the documents were deleted due to a technical error or the data was deleted due to some hacking attempt. A three-member high-level committee has already been constituted at the Lucknow head office to monitor the e-tendering process and the Sentinel app. The chairman of this committee is Saurabh Bairathi, chief engineer of the Indo-Nepal border, while the two other members are chief engineer (building) CP Gupta and headquarters of chief engineers themselves. This team monitors the ongoing e-tendering process across the state. We didn’t see any data on the Sentinel app. The firm contractor filed a complaint, information about which was given to the head office officials. The possibility of missing documents in the tender is not possible in the technical system. The whole situation will be clear only after investigation. Anil Kumar, Superintending Engineer, PWD All the necessary documents were uploaded on time and their confirmation was also visible in the application. But after opening the app after some time, the entire data was found to be missing. If the investigation is done properly, it will definitely confirm any external cyber interference. This tender process must also be stopped until the investigation is completed. Durgesh Singh Chauhan, Varad Enterprises