NCW calls for amendment of IT Act to combat cybercrime against women

Addressing a webinar on cybercrime against women in India, NCW chief Rekha Sharma today called for an amendment to the existing IT Act in order for it to be effective against the advanced methods used by predators, writes ETV Bharat senior reporter Chandrakala Choudhury.

New Delhi: National Commission for Women chief Rekha Sharma on Friday called for an amendment to the Information Technology Act 2000, keeping in mind the present work culture and to thwart the advance ways used by predators to commit cybercrimes.

"There is an imminent need to generate awareness about basic online conduct and redressal mechanisms already in place to report cybercrimes. It was imperative to fix onus of responsibility on social media platforms to prevent cybercrimes and making them accountable and answerable whenever such cases occur," Rekha Sharma said while addressing a webinar on cybercrime against women in India.

The webinar shed light on the importance of 'Digital Shakti' and 'We Think Digital' initiative by National Commission for Women in association with Cyber Peace Foundation and Facebook for empowering women digitally and impart knowledge about online safety tools.

It is one of the many women-centric programmes run by the commission that has successfully trained 60,000 women last year to combat cybercrimes, misinformation and plans to reach out to one lakh people across the country this year.

Present as the chief guest, Dr Rajendra Kumar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in his keynote address said, "There is a need for all the stakeholders to collaborate in order to ensure that the online medium is safely used by everyone including women and children."

He highlighted on the collaborative efforts undertaken by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology through which they are imparting basic and advanced training to law enforcement agencies, forensic labs and judiciary about the procedures and methodology for collecting, analysing and presenting digital evidence.

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It is worth noting that the National Cyber Coordination Centre has been set up to coordinate with multiple agencies and stakeholders for preventing cyber-attacks, reducing vulnerability and minimising damage of such attacks.

Conducted by the NCW, the webinar primarily focused on the issue pertaining to the security of women in cyberspace and deliberated on the ineffective implementation of a law that adds to the vulnerability of women online.

It elaborately discussed the inadequacies of laws in the first half and later deliberated upon measures that are essential apart from the legal framework to ensure cyber safety of women.

Cybercrime is rising at an alarming rate in India as hackers take advantage of the country's dependency on the virtual world.

According to records by NCW, 54 cyber complaints were received online in April in comparison to 37 complaints received online by post in March, and 21 complaints in February and the number seems to be increasing gradually.

Some of the key deliberations that came out of the discussion were that the present laws have not been able to completely reflect the ground realities of cybercrime that are faced by women in their daily lives.

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Among the many panelists present for the discussuion, were Pattathil Dhanya Menon, India's First Cyber Crime Investigator, Dr Meena Chadha Borwankar, and DG (Retd), Bureau of Police Research and Development.

It was suggested that though change in legislation is required, what is even more important is to bring awareness on a large scale of the existing provisions to help victims of cybercrime.

The panelists also suggested that coming together of NGOs, Women Cells, government agencies as well as civil society organisations is imperative for changing the landscape of cyber safety. One of the key solutions suggested by the host of panellists for combating cybercrimes was the involvement of social media companies for controlling crime against women so that offensive content is pulled down from respective mediums at the earliest.

Specific cyberlaw for women and children and control over one's personal information and data were few recommendations suggested by them.

The panel also recommended that there was an urgent need for setting up a quick redressal mechanism for cybercrimes and educating the future generation legally, ethically and morally so that they grow up to become responsible citizens.

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