Hyderabad: The lack of advanced equipment and highly qualified expertise to investigate cyber-crime at the local police stations is leading to delayed or no investigation into e-crime cases.
The Telangana police higher-ups last year asked citizens to approach their local police stations if they get victimized by e-fraudsters. Following the orders issued the citizens started approaching the police stations in their neighbourhood.
Sources informed that the local police are accepting the complaints and in bigger crimes are also registering FIRs. However, when it comes to the investigation part, Telangana police officials are failing to do a speedy investigation due to lack of wherewithal required in probing it.
Incidentally, every fifth First Information Report (FIR) in Hyderabad pertains to cybercrime, said a senior cop. Crooks are present over almost all virtual platforms to con and dupe people.
Hyderabad Commissioner of Police C V Anand also said that about 20 percent of 100 FIRs the police register in the city are about cybercrime frauds, and various types of e-frauds and the suspects are from across the globe.
The official explained that in the future the rate of conventional crime will drop further and the number of cybercrime cases will increase drastically. To deal with the rising cybercrime, police officers feel that a lot much is to be done.
The existing infrastructure with the Telangana police will not be able to handle the load with more cybercrime to be reported in the future, cops who did not want to be named, said. In the coming days, the workload will be more, and to deal with it, the required expertise and equipment are needed. Large teams specialized in the investigation of cybercrime need to be set up, they added.
Large-scale recruitments of candidates with the required necessary qualifications in cyber security and related subjects should be done and equipment procured for SIM card reading, data retrieval from memory cards, IP address tracking, etc.
Coming to the local police station level cases, cops are forwarding it to the cyber crime police station again. “After keeping for a time as there is no progress, the local police are transferring it to the cybercrime police station defeating the purpose of empowering the local police to book and investigate cyber frauds,” pointed out a senior criminal lawyer.
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