PAN card details are available on messaging platform Telegram. According to a report by The Fourth News, the data leak happened because of the CoWIN portal--Covid vaccination portal in which people registered their personal details.
The report said that when a mobile number registered with the CoWIN portal is entered, the Telegram bot discloses the number of the ID card used for vaccination along with gender, birth year, and name of the vaccination centre, and his/her doses.
With this massive data breach, the Aadhaar card, voter ID, and PAN card numbers of Indian citizens are accessible to anyone on Telegram.
Mint could not independently verify this report. According to the Malayalam daily, the secretary of the Union Health Ministry Rajesh Bhushan was among the victims of the data leak.