MANGALURU: Many challenges thrown by cybercriminals have made Mangaluru City Cyber Crime Branch (CCCB) struggle to solve the cases, with its police inspector post is still lying vacant.
According to the data provided by the CCCB since the inception of this agency as many as 207 cases have been registered in the station, while the cyber sleuths only managed to dispose meager six cases. The CCCB in Mangaluru came into existence in Oct 2017.
In the year 2018, 75 cases were been registered and only single case saw the light of the day, while this year among 108 cases, not even a single case has been solved. A cyber officer said, every year number of cases is increasing and with more digital presence, crimes will also exponentially grow.
There are various types of cybercrime cases registered, starting from bank frauds to ATM skimming to Nigerian cyber crimes. The major crimes are credit and debit card frauds, ATM skimming, matrimonial frauds, dating app frauds, OLX and other frauds.
DCP (Crime and Traffic) Lakshmi Ganesh told Express that the major problem in these cases is jurisdictional. In most cases, the fraudsters hail from regions like Jharkhand, Bihar, Mumbai and other parts of North India. The bank accounts they use for transactions are purchased ie, they use accounts of some poor locals. Once they commit crime, they withdraw the money and flee.
"In a recent case, our team coordinated with Jharkhand police. It is very difficult to do this all the time," he said.
Another challenge is expertise. The CCCB is currently headless with no inspector. Not all cases can be solved at the constabulary level. Moreover, the advanced technology required to solve some of these cases are not available at the moment. The frauds are more equipped and hence they remain elusive.
A cyber police official said there is a shortage of staff in the CCCB is a serious challenge. Although an officer was posted from Shimoga, he refused to take charge and now Bunder police inspector has been given additional charge. Another officer said that cyber crime stations across the country should come under one umbrella as digital world has no jurisdiction. This will help solve cases very fast.