India's tech capital Bengaluru has no cyber crime police station

BENGALURU: The city, for all its claims to being India’s Silicon Valley, lacks a basic yet essential feature to back that up: A cyber-crime police station.

Bengaluru has a cyber-crime cell at the CID headquarters on Palace Road, but that’s the head office with jurisdiction across Karnataka. It doesn’t take routine cyber-crime complaints, its powers having been heavily diluted as its officers struggle to cope with a deluge of cases.

DC Rajappa, superintendent of police, cyber-crime division, CID, said he has written to the office of the Director General and Inspector General of Police for establishing a full-fledged cyber-crime police station in Bengaluru. "We are waiting for a reply," he said.

Bengaluru Police Commissioner MN Reddi said office space for a cyber-crime police station has been allotted in the new commissioner’s building, and all the required technology and equipment have been installed, but the department is still searching for a suitable official to handle cyber-crime cases.

Diluted powers

The state issued a notification in 2001 to establish a cyber-crime head office that would handle all kinds of offences falling under the Information Technology Act. But as cyber-crimes increased over the years, the head office couldn't handle all the cases and the DG & IGP office in 2013 issued a standing order specifying what kinds of offenses could be handled.

Under this new order, the cyber City police crime cell only registers complaints of cheating through misuse of credit and debit cards if the fraud amount exceeds Rs 1 lakh, and cases of fraudulent money transfers if the amount exceeds Rs 5 lakh. Last year, the cybercrime head office received 50 complaints under these categories from across the state – of which only 10 were disposed of – and two this year.

Poor training

A police inspector in Bengaluru said the department has not given any training to officers to handle cases related to social media abuses or online money transfer frauds. "We find it very difficult to handle these types of cases. In one month, we receive around 15 complaints related to cyber-crime but we don’t have equipment or knowledge to deal with these cases," the inspector said. "Cybercrime officials send the complainants back to jurisdictional police stations.

But as we don’t know how to investigate these cases, the complaints remain pending for years." "I agree that police officials are finding it difficult to handle cyber-crime cases," admitted city police commissioner Reddi.

"There are a lot of online frauds happening every day so police should be well-trained and equipped to handle such crimes," said Amit Nath, country manager, India and SAARC, at F-Secure, a cyber security firm.