In an interesting cyber crime reported from Bangaluru, the DGP and Chief of Internal Security Division, Mr Ashit Mohan Prasad, IPS, was defrauded by Cyber Criminals to the extent of Rs 2 lakhs. This was a typical fraud in which the victim had shared some of his debit card details to fraudsters over phone. A complaint has been lodged with the Cyber Crime wing on Monday (15th October 2018) and further developments are awaited.
We may recall that some time back one MP from Karnataka and another DGP had also fallen prey to such frauds.
Recently, the undersigned had come across another complaint with the Cyber Crime Cell which was registered on “Unknown Accused” and without including all the relevant sections of ITA 2000/8. Though a request has been made for correction to the FIR, no response has been received from the Police. Further we are not aware if the investigation is being carried out at all and if so whether the investigation is proceeding in the right direction. We need to wait for the charge sheet to be filed (if ever it would be filed) to find out the details of the case diary and whether an investigation was really conducted or not.
With this approach, there is no surprise that the first conviction in Bengaluru for Cyber Crimes came only last month despite the talents and facilities that are available to Bengaluru Cyber Crime police at the CID complex which are perhaps the best in India.
According to the report more than 3000 cases have been registered in the newly formed Cyber Crime PS and probably most of them are against “Unknown Persons” and only for the purpose of records.
Now that the complaint has been filed by the DGP himself, it would be interesting to know how the Cyber Crime wing will go about its investigation and how the relevant Bank will react under the Limited Liability obligation.
Let’s watch the developments and check of there is a common law for the ordinary citizens of Bengaluru and also the others.
I fully appreciate that the Cyber Crime wing is understaffed, over burdened with complaints and need to refer most of the complaints for guidance to the Cyber Crime division in CID office. But these are limitations about which the public are not concerned. It is the top brass of the police who need to resolve this issue.
Some time back, I had proposed that Police should register online complaints, authorize approved NGOs to vet the complaints and raise simple queries such as IP resolution to the ISPs etc so that the burden on the Police would come down. Obviously, there was no response from the Police whether in Karnataka or elsewhere.
The T K Vishwanathan commitee had also suggested some changes to the CrPc to improve the Cyber Crime handling capability. The State Government could have taken the lead in making some of these recommendations effective. But they donot consider this a priority.
It would be repetitive if I point out the deficiencies in the system and let us not spend time on the past. Let us at least now look at what we can do in the future. I therefore request both the Police in Bengaluru and the Home department, with people like Pratap Reddy and Sanjay Sahay available as experts to focus on making Karnataka a safe state for Cyber transactions.
Hopefully Mr Ashit Mohan Prasad himself should opt to take the lead in driving the Cyber Crime wing to be more effective and useful. I am sure there are many others who can take care of VIP security whether during Dussera or at other times and capable officers who have an aptitude for Cyber Crime investigations need to be provided in sufficient numbers to the Cyber Crime wing in the Infantry road, to make it effective.
Hope my views would be taken as constructive criticism which it truly is.
Naavi
