Two youths were arrested on Friday for allegedly hacking the official website of food and civil supplies department to link ration cards with Aadhaar numbers near the main entrance of Hazaribagh district collectorate, prompting the deputy commissioner (DC) to order a probe.

Mohammad Junaid and Mohammad Salam, both in 20s, were caught by some employees of the private agency that has been given the charge to maintain and handle the website. The staff of Allied IT Solution were crossing the area when they became suspicious on spotting a small group around the duo, who were busy on a laptop, on zilla school campus.

They informed district supply officer Bhogendra Thakur, who had already suspected that the food and civil supplies website had been hacked.

As an alert was issued, some local people helped the employees catch Junaid and Salam, who reside in Mandaikala of Hazaribagh town, and bring them to the district supply office at the collectorate.

Assistant sub-inspector Shabbir Hussain reached the collectorate and arrested the two on the instruction of DC Ravi Shankar Shukla.

According to sources, the arrested were charging Rs 200 to link ration card with Aadhaar number, which has been made mandatory. Although Allied IT Solution offers this service for free, the long queues and the prolonged wait deter many from visiting government office.

"I was getting complaints about random linking of ration cards with UID numbers without our knowledge. I had sniffed a cyber crime and informed the departmental higher-ups," Thakur said.

Asked how the two got access to high-risk information like user ID and password, he added that the duo might have got hold of the same when they went to the district supply office for some work. think that there were others with these two youths, but they escaped" the district supply officer said.

Sources said the duo belonged to a family of daily-wage labourers and might have acquired knowledge in hacking and other computer-related jobs in Giridih, a hotbed of cyber crimes.

DC Shukla said that the matter was of serious nature as the duo had hacked a government site and manipulated with data.