NEW DELHI: Aiming to hit hard at cyber criminals and the crime hotspots, the Ministry of Home Affairs’ (MHA) Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) has developed and launched a software called ‘Pratibimb’ to help enforcement agencies, including state police forces, to map cyber criminals in real time and destroy their network, officials said.
‘Pratibimb’ offers a unique advantage of projecting mobile numbers used in cybercrimes across the entire country onto a Geographic Information System (GIS) map, said officials.
The software also provides a map view to personnel of the law enforcement agencies and service providers to ascertain the actual locations of mobile numbers active in criminal activities. With the launch of ‘Pratibimb’, the MHA has issued directions to concerned central state agencies to initiate action against identified 12 cybercriminal hotspots and have asked them to narrow down for targeted actions.
A senior official said, “Since the software was launched last week, monitoring of these criminals, it was observed that they change their locations after raids by local police, posing a challenge as their continuous movement is not easy to track and is a time-consuming practice.”
However, areas in Haryana and Jharkhand have been targeted, and large-scale operations have been conducted to apprehend cyber criminals, the officials said, adding that in one of the largest operations against cybercrime, the Haryana police have arrested 42 cyber criminals this week in Nuh, Mewat, in connection with several nationwide cyber-fraud cases. This resulted in the seizure of 50 cell phones, fake Aadhaar cards, over 90 SIM cards, cash, and ATM cards.
In another operation, I4C located fraudsters involved in the manipulation of fantasy cricket betting games. These cyber criminals manipulated live matches to benefit their fantasy teams, a difficult scheme for individual users to detect.
Tracing real location
The software also provides a map view to personnel of the law enforcement agencies and service providers to ascertain the actual locations of mobile numbers active in criminal activities. The MHA issued directions to central agencies to initiate action against identified 12 cybercriminal hotspots and asked them to narrow down for targeted actions.