Mumbai: With a view to battle the ever-increasing cyber crime in the city, a number of officers from Mumbai Police are likely to attend cyber crime detection training.
A senior official said while requesting confidentiality, the move was taken after there was a staff crunch in Mumbai’s full fledged Cyber police station at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC).
Data procured from a Right To Information (RTI) reply revealed that a number of posts remain vacant at the Cyber police station, mostly at the police sub inspector (PSI) and constabulary ranks.
In the upcoming training sessions, the city policemen will learn how to work on routine cyber crimes as well as know their way around the cyber laboratories, which will be equipped with high-end hardware and software tools, in each of the districts for digital forensic analysis. Police will also be trained to collect evidence from mobile phones, CDs, call data records (CDR) and social media.
Last year, an alarming 1,096 cases of cyber crime were registered in Mumbai, out of which only 128 cases were detected. Similarly, out of 446 cases of debit/credit card frauds, a mere 23 cases were solved.
Other cases like cheating, fake profile and defamation had a disappointing detection rate as well, which could be contributed to the lack of policemen equipped with Cyber crime knowledge.
All 93 police stations in Mumbai have an independent cyber crime unit to tackle minor cases related to crimes committed on an Internet platform. “The officers posted at Cyber police station have specialised skills to deal with complicated and tricky cases,” said an official.
The staff crunch in Cyber police station calls for a major setback when it comes to probe and detection. An official said, “The criminals have moved focus from street crimes to cyber crimes, as it provides them an easy way out and minimal human interaction, averting identification.”
Cyber crime cases that are often registered include phishing, online fraud and cheating, stalking on social media, e-mail abuse, hacking, and copyright, among others.
The lower ranks of the police department constitute the mainframe of groundwork policing and detection, wherein they are tasked with the probe of hundreds of cases from scratch.
Of the 17 sanctioned posts for the PSIs, only seven are filled, while the remaining 10 lie vacant. Similarly, Cyber police station has only eight police constables working at the moment, while 26 posts were sanctioned, leaving a massive 18 posts vacant, revealed an RTI. Moreover, post of a police inspector also lies vacant.
