It was on October 12, 2020 that the financial capital of the country was engulfed by a sudden power breakdown which lasted almost for ten hours. The city which never sleeps and is always on a move despite the prevailing situation caused by COVID 19 pandemic came to a standstill. More than a month after the Mumbai blackout reports about the cause of the outage have baffled the common man as it is being suspected that the foreign enemies had undertaken a possible cyber attack on the state load dispatch which keeps a check on power transmission and manages the load dispatch.

Initial finding of Maharashtra cyber department

In order to find out the real cause for the power outage in Mumbai, the government handed over the probe to the Maharashtra state cyber department. The initial probe by the cyber department has revealed that the multiple “suspicious log-ins” into the servers connected with power utilities by accounts operating from Singapore have been found. The role of the Chinese hackers cannot also be ruled out as earlier in June the cyber cell had issued a warning stating that China-based hackers were on a move to disrupt India’s cyber space. The investigation had revealed that the aim of the enemy is to attack the government departments especially vital sectors like banking, information and infrastructure.

Impact of the Mumbai Blackout

Owing to the blackout which lasted for several hours, medical services in hospitals were adversely affected. The train services also faced the brunt of the blackout resulting in their cancellation and work at the stock market and several commercial establishments also came to a halt.

Is standoff with China the real cause of power outage in Mumbai?

Earlier in June this year, India and China were involved in a severe standoff at the Galwan valley after which the probe agencies revealed that the possibility of Chinese Information Warfare cell along with the Chinese Army disrupting India’s cyber space cannot be ruled out. Special Inspector General of Police, Yashasvi Yadav, Maharashtra Cyber Intelligence Cell at that point of time had told the media that such attacks had emerged from Chengdu area of China. He had also stated that they had acquired information of about 40300 cyber attacks till then.