Indian call centres say they are as good as any

The Nasscom trade body wrote to the TV channel asking it to share its findings and expressing concern at its methods.

Channel 4, which is said to have spent a year on the report, said it was not its job to act as a "police agent".

The Dispatches programme shows alleged middlemen selling confidential data. It will be broadcast on Thursday.

Many in India feel the country is deliberately being projected as an unsafe destination for business process outsourcing by vested interests, correspondents say.

But foreign call centres are a sensitive issue in the UK, where many such jobs have been outsourced abroad - mainly to India.

'Global issue'

Channel 4 says The Data Theft Scandal "investigates the call centre security failures which allow personal financial details to be stolen and illegally traded".

A well-oiled machine is bound to have some envious onlookers with a desire to undermine it Times of India

Two alleged Indian middlemen are shown selling valuable bank customer details to undercover journalists.

Kiran Karnik, president of India's National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), said: "While there are a lot of unanswered questions, we take any allegation of a breach in our security extremely seriously.

"Security is a number one priority and under no circumstances will we allow this to be compromised."

"We are concerned about the verifiability of such stories, especially sting operations where monetary inducements were provided.

"These operations sometimes go beyond uncovering wrongdoing and actually induce criminal activity that is then recorded and aired."

The Nasscom statement said Dispatches had refused to share its information.

A Channel 4 spokesperson told the BBC: "As a responsible broadcaster, our role is to bring our findings to the attention of the public.

"It is not the role of journalists or broadcasters to act as agents of the police or any other authority."

Controversial

Outsourcing of jobs is a sensitive issue in Britain where thousands have lost their jobs after call centre work was moved to India.

London-based Riten Gohil, who is an expert in international financial crime, told the BBC the sting essentially shows "the general lack of trust in Indian society".

Thousands of call centre jobs have been created in India

Mr Gohil says the incident could have happened anywhere. "It could have been in Philippines or China or even UK or the US. Criminal minds are not a cultural or regional issue, they are a global issue."

He says because a large number of British jobs have been outsourced to India in the past few years, this "animosity in Britain is natural".

But, he adds, that "India takes security issues very seriously" and that Indian workers are "very skilled, very professional and very hard working".

In June, police in the southern Indian city of Bangalore arrested an HSBC employee in connection with alleged financial wrongdoing.

Nadeem Kashmiri, a data operator, was charged with hacking into the computer system which allegedly led to money being stolen from customer accounts.

HSBC said funds were taken from a "small number" of customers in UK.

The worker is said to have supplied customer data to fraudsters, leading to a total of �233,000 being taken.