BHUBANESWAR: With a rise in incidence of cyber offences, the Crime Branch (CB) on Wednesday brought in over 70 officers from different parts of the State to train them on the basic investigation methodology. The CB aims to cover officers of all police stations of the State in the next couple of years.
The objective behind the training workshop was to sensitise the officers about importance of registering cyber offences at territorial police station levels. Although there has been a record jump in registration of cyber crime cases in the last two years, there are several instances wherein complainants are asked to register their cases at Cyber Police Station at Cuttack.
In 2014, just about 127 cyber offences were registered across the State. Last year, the number jumped to 427. “The rise was primarily because Crime Branch went on a monthly drive, egging on the police stations to accept the cases and investigate them,” Special Director General of Police Bijay Kumar Sharma said.
Sharma said more and more credit and ATM card fraud cases are being reported from semi-urban and rural pockets these days but interestingly, the incidence of complainants being turned away from police stations is recorded in urban areas. The mindset of police officers, he said, needs to change.
“We want to equip each police station with the skill to investigate cyber offences so that the number of registration increases. Since we train 70 to 80 officers in one workshop, we are hopeful of covering all territorial police stations in the next couple of years. We will have a pool of skilled officers by then,” the CB chief said.
Experts from Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Kolkata were also invited to train the officers on retrieval of digital data and evidence.