Mumbai Police is facing the challenge of tracking cyber crime cases which, more often than not, go unreported, and in apprehending the masterminds who operate without geographic boundaries. In 2021, Mumbai Police registered an 18 per cent rise in cyber crime – a trend reflective of an increasing tribe of digital criminals who are steadily adding to their profits without getting into the risk of street violence.
While Mumbai, like most cities across the globe, has seen a significant surge in cyber scams with the internet supplanting the real world as a hunting ground for criminals, Mumbai Police is facing the challenge of tracking these cases which, more often than not, go unreported, and in apprehending the masterminds who operate without geographic boundaries.
Recently, in the annual crime conference of the Mumbai Police, the joint commissioner of police (crime), Milind Bharambe, acknowledged that dealing with cyber crime was a “challenging issue” and spoke at length about why solving such cases was difficult. While records state that only 2,883 cybercrime cases were registered in 2021, senior officials privately agree that many more cases in which amounts involved may be smaller are not even registered at the police stations. Even the detection of the cases that were filed was pretty low — at 16 per cent with only 455 of the 2,833 cases being detected.
The low detection is largely due to the modus operandi used by the accused who operate their criminal enterprises from faraway states and cover their tracks with sophisticated software.
The most common way of swindling money is to talk gullible victims into disclosing their personal financial details and decamping with money from their bank accounts or electronic wallets using this information. Another way is a simple confidence trick whereby the fraudsters gain trust of the victims and willingly make them transfer large amounts into their accounts.
The difficulty of tracing them is largely because of the areas from which the criminal choose to operate. The earliest such hotspot was Jamtara in Jharkhand.
JCP Bharambe said, “There are several cyber hotspots on the map of the country, especially villages from where these cyber criminals operate. These areas are strategically chosen in Naxal areas, deserted or hilly terrain to ensure police forces have a difficult time reaching there.”
Some of these hotspots operate from different states such as Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar and Rajasthan, he said. Of late, as per several reports, Mewat, Bharatpur and Mathura, which form the tri-junction of Haryana, Rajasthan and UP, is being termed as the “New Jamtara” after it was found that a majority of cyber crimes was committed from this region. It was found that the accused keep moving between these three states whenever the police go after them.
One of the first buffers the fraudsters create against arrest is by targeting victims from other states. In most cases, fraudulent calls being made in Mumbai came from Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana. Hunting for criminals in these places would entail the city or state police to travel to other states and take assistance from other units.
The second reason for the low detection is apathy on the part of the police who think twice before sending their teams to far-off places for the fear of incurring expenditure to recover what they deem as “miniscule amounts”. An officer said that if a person has lost around Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000, sending a team of five-six personnel behind the accused would cost more than the amount lost by the victim.
The few cases in which police teams went to far-off places and arrested the accused are those in which the amount lost is to the tune of several lakhs. Even the five new cyber police stations started in the city last year to take on this menace only take complaints for cases in which the amount lost is higher than Rs 10 lakh. Provided that most cases with a smaller sum of money involved are bound to go unsolved, police stations, too, are reluctant to “spoil their statistics” by converting complaints into FIRs.
Under these circumstances, a majority of victims have no option but to let go of the money they have lost to cyber crime.
The only scenario where a victim can recover their money is if they alert the police or the bank within an hour of the fraud being committed and ensure the transaction is reverted.
The setting up of five cyber crime police stations in the last one year has also helped in increasing the number of resolved cases. In 2021, even as the overall detection rate in cyber crime cases was 16%, it was 59% at the cyber crime police stations. “The victims in cases of cybercrimes should approach the police station within the ‘golden hour’ — within one hour of the crime taking place.
This makes it easier to block the money transfer,” former Mumbai police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale had said.
Cyber expert Ritesh Bhatia said that in order to solve the situation, there is a need for a federal agency with units in several states. “Considering these crimes take place from various hotspots in the country, there is a need for a federal agency which has units in different states. If you send a police team from Mumbai to another state every time there is a cyber fraud, the team will permanently remain there.”
Tomorrow Part 2: Cyber crime and its victims
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
