New Delhi: Shocked over the increasing number of cybercrimes across India, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has suggested to the Union Home Ministry to consider creating volunteer help groups of IT experts from civil society who can contribute in devising methods to track cyber thieves and bringing them to justice.
The committee headed by Rajya Sabha MP Anand Sharma said that the states are facing constraints of manpower and resources in managing cyber crimes investigation.
"The State and UT police should create a cybercrime help desk for immediate reporting of the cyber crimes leading to an early investigation by them. Timely intervention could lead to the prevention of such crimes as well as relief to the victims," the Parliamentary panel said in its report.
The MHA may allocate adequate funds and extend necessary resources for the establishment of cyber training labs and strengthening and upgrading of existing cyber training infrastructure in all States and UTs.
As per National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, cyber crimes cases have increased from 27248 in 2018 to 50035 in 2020. The committee observed that these crimes are mainly related to financial transactions.
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"The criminals not only target the innocent and vulnerable, especially elderly people, and dupe them of their savings but also well-known persons and celebrities," the report said.
The committee said that specialized training was required to deal with the increasing cybercrimes in the country. The committee recommended that the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy (SVPNPA), North East Police Academy (NEPA) should coordinate with state training academies to train police personnel with requisite knowledge of cyber laws, cybercrime investigation, digital forensics and upgrade them from time to time on new technological tools to deal with cybercrimes.
"The training academies may be advised to recruit cyber experts as trainers on cyber technologies," the committee said in its report.
The committee emphasized that traditional training of the police personnel was not sufficient to deal with cyber crimes as these criminals are tech-savvy and are following new modus-operandi on a regular basis.
The representatives of the MHA informed the committee that to strengthen training on the cybercrime investigation, a specialized center of SVPNPA, namely National Digital Crime Resource and Training Centre (NDCRTC), set up in 2015, provides training in cybercrime investigation and cyber security to all law enforcement officers across the country.
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The use of the dark web, voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) calls, etc. are some of the tools actively used by criminals but police strategies for these are still evolving.
Home Ministry statistics in possession of ETV Bharat said that States and UTs across India have set up 376 cyber cells, 1,302 women cells, and 262 social media monitoring cells. Bihar has the highest number of cyber cells at 75, followed by Maharashtra 47, Odisha 34.
Ironically, some states like Punjab, Rajasthan, Goa, Assam do not have a single cybercrime cell while in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh only one/two cybercrime cells have been set up.
