The regional vice-president of a top brokerage firm has been arrested for allegedly hacking into a city-based chartered accountant’s demat account to sell and transfer Rs 46 lakh worth of shares.

Siddartha Daga, 26, of Indiabulls stands accused of selling the bulk of client Arunava Chakraborty’s portfolio of 65,000 Arvind Pharma shares and transferring some to his name after cracking the demat password and changing it.

“Chakraborty had opened a demat account with Indiabulls recently but couldn’t operate it because of a password error. The person responsible for it turned out to be the regional vice-president of the company,” said Jawed Shamim, deputy commissioner (detective department).

Daga, arrested on Tuesday, has been remanded in police custody till August 18.

“He made contradictory statements at first but confessed to the crime later. We are trying to trace the middleman who coaxed Chakraborty into opening that account recently,” an investigator said.

Madhu Nayar, the regional director of Indiabulls, was unavailable for comment. Metro found both his cellphones switched off.

Chakraborty, a resident of Salt Lake, had lodged a police case against Indiabulls after paying several visits to the company’s Lee Road office to complain about being unable to operate his account.

A team led by Swapan Dasgupta, the additional commissioner of police in the economic offence wing, picked up Daga from his Tagore Castle Street residence in Burtolla on Monday night.

“Daga started trading the moment he hacked Chakraborty’s password. Within 45 minutes, he had transferred 20,000 shares into his account and sold another 45,000 at lower than prevailing market rates,” an officer said.

The last time Chakraborty accessed his demat account was on August 5. “The next morning he tried logging in but could not. He went to the Indiabulls office to complain but the officials allegedly wouldn’t give him a hearing. He lodged a complaint with Bhowanipore police station and the case was later taken over by the detective department,” the officer said.

Chakraborty had a demat account with another brokerage house but was allegedly persuaded into switching to Indiabulls by an unidentified agent.

“We won’t be surprised if we receive more such complaints now,” the police said.