Telangana government, police spearheading digital initiatives in policing: CV Anand

Hyderabad: The State government and police were spearheading digital initiatives in policing and have an impressive record in training thousands of police officers, Hyderabad City Police Commissioner CV Anand said on Monday. He gave examples of 15 types of cyber frauds, especially the loan apps which have led to the suicide by three people in the last 10 days, and how it has become very difficult to investigate and catch the perpetrators. The Hyderabad police chief was speaking after inaugurating the five-day Dark Web Investigators Workshop at the Telangana State Police Academy (TSPA) here, an official release said.

This course is being attended by police officers from all over the country and central and state government agencies.

With the steep rise in cyber crimes and the cyber perpetrators resorting to sophisticated cyber attacks, through Deep and Dark Web, hacking, crypto currencies, the cyber world has turned out to be a tough digital terrain for the law enforcement agencies to investigate and apprehend the persons as most crimes were being committed from remote countries, the release said.

To deal with this alarming trend, the Telangana Intelligence Department in association with security research firm Convergence Innovation Labs which collaborated with Mark Bentley, an ex-police officer in UK police and an expert trainer with 40 years experience, to synergise the capacity building programme of the police personnel in Telangana, it said.

"The recent detection of the Mahesh Bank hacking case and the Xsilica e-payment gateway hacking case show that it is possible to investigate these cases and requires special expertise and resources to do so," Anand said.

Twenty-three people, including four Nigerians, were arrested in connection with the swindling of Rs 12.48 crore from the AP Mahesh Co-Operative Urban Bank in the city in March this year after hackers entered the bank's system through phishing mails. A case was registered regarding the fraud earlier in January.

In the payment gateway case, a 28-year-old man was arrested for hacking into the database server of the platform and allegedly swindling Rs 52.9 lakh in May this year.

Commissioner Anand said even narcotic drugs are being trafficked using the dark web as a crackdown was launched against it in Telangana.

"Simulating real-world examples and incidents, materials, open source intelligence tools (OSINT) and exercises, the workshop and master class equips cyber investigators with the latest cutting-edge tools and investigation methodology," Anand added.