Adarsh Developers has filed a police complaint against Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others. The complaint, filed by the company’s CHRO Sridhar Rajendran, accuses AWS of violating the IT Act and sections of the BNS related to cheating, fraud, and impersonation. Adarsh Developers, a major real estate firm with a Rs 2,100 crore turnover, claimed its financial and customer data, stored on AWS cloud services, was mishandled. The real estate company also alleged that data mismanagement by Amazon’s cloud services resulted in a Rs 150 crore loss for the company.
What AWS said about the compliant
“The claims against AWS are false. AWS operated as designed and is not responsible for the deletion of Adarsh Developers’ data,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement to The Hindu.
What Adarsh Developers complained about AWS
Adarsh Developers accused Amazon cloud services of storing financial and customers’ personal data. According to the complaint, in May 2023, Saidalawi Safan, a business development representative from AWS, allegedly contacted the company and urged them to upgrade to a new service, assuring data retrieval even in cases of cyberterrorism or sabotage.
In December 2023, the company adopted the upgraded storage system. However, last month, the AWS-hosted data environment was entirely deleted.
The complaint further stated that upon reaching out to implementation partner SAVIC Technologies Pvt. Ltd., they were informed that the data loss resulted from actions taken by certain individuals at Redington, a vendor and AWS.
In the complaint, Adarsh Developers said: “This resulted in the loss of over six years of company business data causing substantial financial and operational loss to the company. Vital financial records, supply chain data, customer information, and operational insights accumulated over years were now is inaccessible.”
The complaint also stated that the company was unable to collect customer payments, pay statutory taxes, or meet interest obligations to lenders, resulting in a daily loss of nearly Rs 5 crore since last month. By the end of January 31 the total estimated loss had reached around Rs 150 crore, Adarsh Developers claimed. The cybercrime police have launched an investigation into the matter.
