BENGALURU: The city’s lone cyber crime police station (CCPS) has been shut down temporarily. Reason: The software can register only 9,999 cases and the station has now reached that limit. As a result, local police stations are seeing an increase in these cases now. But they lack the software or skills. Earlier this month, the CCPS had a notice up in front of the station requesting citizens to approach local police stations to file cyber complaints.
In Whitefield alone, the number of cases has gone up to 50 from 10-12 with more cases registered in Bellandur and Marathahalli. “The number of cases has gone up by two or three times. But we have three-four trained officers in each station who can look into such cases,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Whitefield) M N Anucheth.
“In the past week, we have seen at least five cases registered, while earlier we used to refer the people to CCPS. The Police Commissioner has informed all cops to undergo training at CID. Though presently, not all are trained, it will happen in the near future,” said DCP (Central) Chethan Singh Rathore who has 12 stations under him.
One positive outcome of this change is that victims can now file complaints at any police station instead of at CCPS. “Since there were a large number of cases registered there, it was difficult for the officers to investigate and hence only FIRs were registered. But now, it is easier as all stations can take up cases,” said N Shashi Kumar, DCP (North).
However, stations lack the software to track down complicated cases and the software is yet to be updated. “We do not have much equipment. Since this is temporary, we manage to investigate some simple cases like online harassment, block bank accounts from being hacked etc,” said an inspector from the Central division.
Another inspector of North division said, “We cannot investigate difficult cases because we don’t have the skills for it. There are plenty of officers who are good with IT. But for comprehensive cases, we need to train policemen or the cases should be taken up by professionals,” the inspector said.
Officials said that the Cyber Crime, Economic Offences & Narcotics (CEN) stations are likely to come up soon.