Bengaluru: Cybercrime cops save Rs 48 crore from fraudsters

BENGALURU: Around 12.10pm on May 24, Jayanagar resident Ramu (name changed) received a call. The caller claimed to be from Ramu's bank and said the account holder's details had to be updated. Acting on the caller's instructions, Ramu, 46, gave his details and also an OTP that came to him.
Around 1pm, Ramu received a message that Rs 67,999 had been withdrawn from his account. Suspecting he had been duped, Ramu called 112, the cybercrime control room of the city police, around 1.20pm and a Cybercrime Incident Report (CIR) was registered. On trail of the money transfer, sleuths detected the account to which Ramu's money had been moved and got it blocked by 2.20pm the next day.
Ramu's money now lies in the blocked bank account. He will get it back once jurisdictional police convert the CIR into an FIR and obtain court's permission for further investigation.
The Jayanagar resident is among 1,300 lucky CIR complainants, who called 112 in time and got the fraudulent beneficiary bank accounts blocked between December 22, 2020 and May 30, 2021. In all, 3,145 cybercrime-financial fraud cases were registered as CIRs in the same period. While no arrests have been made in these cases, the money at least is safe, say police. The frozen accounts together have Rs 48 crore, which the victims lost, and beneficiaries' access to the same has been cut.
City police officers credit the success in blocking the money from reaching fraudsters to the CIR system. The concept of CIR was floated on December 22, 2020 with an aim to freeze bank accounts of miscreants duping victims online. Police say a victim, on finding s/he has been cheated, should file the CIR quickly. "The first two hour of such crimes are treated as golden hours. If a victim can file a complaint in that period, it will help us freeze the bank account of the suspect," said police commissioner Kamal Pant.
"Our CIR is the first of its kind in the country. All these days, victims had to approach the police station and file an FIR. While doing so, the golden period of two hours would be lost. Now, with CIR in place, victims can dial 112 and lodge a complaint. The CIR control room staff will contact the nodal officers of the banks, other financial institutions and the service providers and block the suspect's accounts," Pant explained.
The commissioner said women victims of cybercrime need not even come to the police station and can call 112 to register the CIR even in the middle of night.