Three-fold rise in city cyber crimes

Dearth of skilled personnel and latest technologies hampering probe.

The cyber crime rate in Hyderabad has registered almost a three-fold increase from 2012 in cases filed under the IT Act, thanks to the police's failure in deterring new generation crimes.

The AP police, however, lag behind in cracking cyber crimes due to a dearth of skilled expertise and computer systems. Not surprisingly, cyber crime police station located at the Central Crime Station in Nampally has a success rate of a minuscule 40 per cent.

Inadequate IT knowledge and lack of expertise are major hurdles for the city police in probing new generation crimes. Crime scene preservation, search and seizure of electronic evidence require a different approach than that of traditional method, a top police official said.

At present there are three cyber crime police stations operating in the State, one IT hub with Hyderabad as the main centre, another CID Cyber Crime Station, set up in 2002, in Hyderabad and third under the jurisdiction of Cyberabad Commissionerate. Police officials say that most of the hacking cases pertain to compromising e-mails for personal retaliation or for committing financial fraud. The accounts are hacked by criminals to send obscene information to the victim’s contacts. This is done to damage the reputation of the victim, said officials.

Hyderabad Cyber Lab is consistently training police inspectors of AP on ‘Cyber Crime Investigations (Level-I). In spite of various challenges in the past, Data Security Council of India (DSCI) cyber Lab was able to establish its mark slowly in capacity building of law enforcement. This year it trained 114 police officers in five-day program and also supported in 30 cases on cyber crime investigation. “This lab is the best place to provide Cyber Crime Investigation and it is a vital step taken by Hyderabad Police in increasing the essential skills of cyber crimes to all the police officers,” said T Krishna Prasad, Additional DGP, CID.

“Cyber crimes are dominated by financial offences. There has been a tremendous rise where the fraudsters hack into personal e-mail accounts of customers and companies. They entice the customers to deposit money in fake bank accounts. It is mainly because of lack of knowledge about the IT Act,” said TS Uma Maheswara Rao, Inspector of Police, Cyber Crime Police Station, Hyderabad.

The city crime police is working in close association with Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). Courses conducted at C-DAC are aimed at creating a set of skilled policemen for taking cyber crimes such as e-mail sexual harassment, cyber stalking, defacing of government websites and misuse of internet for defaming citizens. The cops were also trained in investigating internet fraud, auction and retail schemes of web. Cyber terrorism and banking networks are part of the course, the inspector said.