BENGALURU: The Cyber Crime Police Station (CCPS) now seems to be in a position to investigate over 16,000 cases that have been pending since its inception in 2017. This, after eight Cyber Economic Narcotic (CEN) stations came up in December last year. The CCPS has disposed of 400 cases in just 15 days this month, as compared to 1,000 cases in the entire year in 2019.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime 1) Kuldeep Kumar Jain said that the CCPS is now focussing only on investigating the pending cases, while CEN stations are registering the new cases. “Most of the cases are temporarily closed when a victim loses money and we are able to retrieve it through the bank. The victim then gives us a letter stating that there is no need to proceed further with the investigation. If the victim still wants to trace the accused, the case stays open,” he told TNIE.
As of now, not a single cybercrime case in the city has been fully cracked by the police. “The police personnel are only fully satisfied when a case is solved. But here, criminals would be in some other state, and most of the time, law enforcement agencies there do not cooperate with us. It is difficult then to catch the culprits,” Jain said. An officer from CCPS said that it is difficult to pursue all the pending cases, especially those concerning social media harassment among others.
Giving an example, CCPS sources said that a team has headed to Rajasthan to catch a six-member gang which was behind a QR code scam. The team has gone for a week and has reportedly caught two members of the gang. With 10,500 cases being registered in 2019 alone, it may take some time to dispose of all of them, the DCP pointed out.“It is not practical to send out teams to every part of the country in search of criminals.
But CEN stations have eased our work,” said Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao. “Most of the cases are OTP-based, where we can retrieve the money. In the next state budget, we are pushing for two experts who are IT professionals and can track down each case. Right now, we are just teaching the basic IT work to our policemen, but that will not help in solving hi-tech crimes,” he said. The Bengaluru city police will also look at strengthening CEN stations with better equipment.