BENGALURU: Due to the dismal track record of solving less than 10% of cybercrime cases in the past two years, Bengaluru police and the State government have decided to take measures to put in place the resources and procedures required to solve the high number of crimes. Police Commissioner Kamal Pant said that a two to four member crack technical team would be brought in to effectively utilise the crucial golden hour -- the gap between occurrence of the crime and time taken to report it to the police.
“Time is of essence when it comes to cybercrime. The technical team will be able to track the transfer of money and location of the person behind the crime. They will also train our officers,” Pant said.A source said, the team could be in place in a week.Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai said on Thursday that to quicken response time, they would put in place a system wherein police and banking networks would be activated when a crime is reported.
Additional Commissioner of Police (West) Soumendu Mukherjee said they were working to shorten the time it takes to register a case. Currently, complainants must go to a station to get an FIR registered.“We are thinking of fine-tuning the system so we can get cases registered more seamlessly on a real-time basis. A dedicated team to assist in taking the initial steps is also crucial during the golden hour to reduce losses.
Legal and procedural requirements will also need to be looked into. Lack of awareness is one part, lack of security on each payment gateway is another. We will need more trained staff to address the growing number of cases,” he said. During the during the lockdown between March 23 and May 5, 952 victims were trapped by online fraudsters.
High number of fraud cases
Ninety-five percent of cyber crimes are financial frauds. Police at the eight Cyber Economic Narcotics stations said frauds on OLX and debit/credit card scams occur the most. “Recently, a man lost Rs 10 lakh while placing an order online. On average, we register 6-10 FIRs every day,” said Renuka, CEN (South) inspector. Most victims are educated or middle-income people, and techie-hub Whitefield has the highest number of cases at 1,152.