Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, July 9

The Ludhiana police today released the progress report of its cyber crime unit for the past seven months.

Commissioner of Police (CP) Rakesh Agrawal stated that there was a drastic rise in cyber crimes, with the criminals using new and innovative methods to defraud people.

“To deal with this upcoming threat, we have developed a dedicated cyber crime unit, equipped with the latest tools and highly trained personnel. The police have been receiving around 300-400 complaints every month since 2020,” Agrawal said.

Sharing figures of the past seven months, he said 1,700 complaints pertaining to cyber crime were disposed of while 29 FIRs were registered in this regard. Around 50 persons were arrested in various cyber crime related cases.

Apart from this, the cell had ensured recovery/refund of Rs 40.16 lakh to cyber fraud victims. The cell had been regularly using social media platforms, including Facebook, to sensitise the public about various types of crimes, including cyber bullying, blackmailing, OTP frauds, extortion, ATM frauds, credit card frauds, OLX frauds, Google search frauds, child pornography etc, the CP maintained.

In December 2020, the cell had busted an inter-state gang of cyber criminals, who had carried out multiple online frauds using fake ID cards, bank accounts, Sim cards etc, leading to arrest of seven accused and recovery of Rs 5.45 lakh cash, 10 mobile phones, eight laptops and fake documents.

Agrawal said special emphasis was being laid on cyber crimes against women, children and senior citizens, and their complaints were dealt on priority.

He also urged the public not to share any kind of child pornography or pornographic videos of any kind, knowingly or unknowingly, on any social media platform.

Meanwhile, Ludhiana residents were advised to not share their personal and financial information with anyone and update the privacy settings of their social media profiles to prevent its misuse.

Busted fake call centre recently

The cyber cell of the Ludhiana police, led by Additional DCP (Crime) Rupinder Kaur Bhatti, had recently busted a multi-crore, pan-India fake call centre racket with the arrest of 37 persons. The call centre was being used to dupe residents of various countries, including the USA, UK and Canada, by posing as tax/ government officials of these countries.