Now, special team to deal with cyber crime

Sanjay Yadav

With the ever-rising number of cyber crimes and increasing pendency, the Gurugram police have finally woken up it seems. 

It has constituted a special 200-member cyber crime task force. The team comprising officers ranging from constables to inspectors would be specially trained to carry out cyber investigations at the police stations only. 

The cops shall continue with their posting at their respective police stations while being trained for the new endeavour. The force would be lead by Shashank Kumar Sawan, DCP (headquarters). 

“We have formed a special task force for cyber crime cases only. We have chosen cops who are graduates, post-graduates or have done BTech. The cops shall be trained by Paytm, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and some bank experts. Our cyber crime taskforce will be strengthened to deal with all types of cyber crimes,” Shashank Kumar Sawan, DCP (headquarters) told The Tribune.

With an average of 18 complaints a day this year, cyber crime has emerged as the biggest threat to tech-savvy millennial residents of Gurugram. With 4,311 complaints received till August 20 this year, as compared to 4,629 in 2018, cyber crime is emerging as the biggest challenge for the local police that have managed to register only 69 FIRs so far. These FIRs include various complaints registered in the previous years.

While the Gurugram police have a dedicated cyber crime police station boasting of all forensic cyber investigating equipment, mostly advanced softwares, the fact that it took five years for the police to investigate and file an FIR of a recruitment fraud, highlights that they are facing issues such as shortage of staff and technical knowhow matching criminals, which eventually slows down the investigation and conviction rate.

Gurugram, like many other cosmopolitan places, is most gullible to cyber crime. According to experts, while technical knowhow, cheating techniques and equipment superiority of cyber criminals upgrades every week, the police team meant to deal with it is surely understaffed and not so ‘up to the mark technically’. 

The cyber cell has a team of two inspectors, three sub-inspectors, 12 assistant sub-inspectors, 14 head constables and 16 constables. With no expert in the team holding a degree in computer science, cops have to undergo a series of trainings and are left to deal with hacking and cyber phishing crimes.

According to the police, the typical style of approaching an investigation includes preliminary tracing investigation by a special cyber crime cell under a commissioner, which then forwards the complaint to the cyber police station. The station then conducts its own inquiry and in many cases it takes several months before an FIR is registered.

According to records this year, the highest number of cyber crime cases pertained to debit/ credit card frauds (2,200 cases). This was followed by frauds through social media with 500 cases and social media-related complaints, including hacking and fake accounts, stood at the third position (391 cases).