In the era of cyber crimes, its prevention has been a big challenge.
By Manohar Manoj
Cybercrime has become a major witness to the change and transition that our social lifestyle and structure of public life are going through. The digital era in which we are rapidly entering is becoming a vehicle for many new types of digital frauds. The bearer of this rapidly changing era is the large section of educated unemployed in the country whose mornings and evenings are spent in the on-screening activities of aping, chatting, and hacking over their smart mobiles and then as a result of this, they become cyber criminals. Many places in the country have become hotspots for online financial crimes. Jamtara of Jharkhand and Mewat of Haryana, these two names have emerged rapidly. Due to these reasons, our media is filled with many innovative and new incidents of cyber crime every day.Recently, data has been released by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center in which it has been said that during January to April of the current year 2024, about Rs 1420 crore of people were defrauded through 62587 digital investment scams. Nearly Rs 222 crore was defrauded through 20043 trading scams. And about Rs 120 crore was defrauded from people through fraudulent information regarding the arrest of their family members. Not only this, but through about 1725 digital online romance and dating frauds, in which about Rs 13 crore were defrauded from the lovers.Last year, between January and April, only about one lakh cases were registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal I4C, in which about ten thousand FIRs were registered. Whereas in the corresponding period of year 2024, there has been a huge increase in these crimes, which has increased six times more. Under six lakh registered cases, about Rs 7061 crore were found lost. Due to the timely filing of a complaint on the portal, about Rs 812 crore was saved from being embezzled.In response to these recorded cyber crimes, with the joint efforts of the I4C portal and police agencies, around 3.2 lakh bank accounts used in crimes were frozen, and around 3 thousand URLs and 595 mobile apps were blocked in the last four months. Let us tell you that cyber police agencies have also suspended 5.3 lakh mobile SIMs and about 80 thousand mobile IMEI numbers involved in these crimes.It is worth noting that cybercrime is a new phenomenon in India, whether it is the work of providing awareness, prevention, and investigation of crime or the work of its prevention, it has not yet become full proof. Be it financial institutions, consumers, cyber police or their legal infrastructure, trial and error theory is still going on and no permanent solution mechanism has been yet settled for this.The irony is that through these incidents it is seen that the person who extorts money by hacking a bank account, immediately transfers his money to a legitimate account and takes cash in exchange or make shopping. Thereafter the culprit changes his fake digital accounts and mobile SIM overnight. Ultimately it bears the brunt of this that a person with a valid account, who due to lack of information, provides cash or shopping facilities to the criminal, becomes a culprit of money laundering.The actual situation is that instead of catching the real culprit, the cyber police or investigation agency arrests the innocent people used in the crime and puts them into mental depression.Since the kingpin who commits these crimes is said to be based in South East Asian countries, they are using unemployed youth in different parts of India.Apart from this, incidents of quick profit financial investment, gaming, and extortion of money by making people fear of police custody of their family members and incidents of romance and honey trap have become quite common on social media sites. It is said that all these criminals were once part of businesses like casinos.It is noteworthy that many new methods of cyber crimes are being invented which neither the public nor even the police can guess.Among these crimes, incidents of financial fraud, money laundering, gaming, lottery, romance, friendship, job fraud, and human trafficking are also increasing openly. Just a few days ago, the Ministry of External Affairs rescued many Indian workers and brought them back from many countries of the world.
The Indian Home Ministry has held several meetings regarding this cyber crime which has become a challenge in the world of crime. In this regard, some inter-ministerial committees have been formed in which intelligence, investigation agencies and law and order agencies were included together. But the reality is that as our lifestyle is changing, diseases and epidemics are coming, same way new sorts of crimes are emerging. Murder, robbery, dacoity, theft and rape were crimes of old times and fraud in financial transactions was a part of corruption. But now online and cyber financial fraud is the modern extension of the same corruption.Overall, cybercrime, which has become a modern synonym of crime and corruption, has become a big challenge for the entire international world, for which an international treaty and agreements are also required. Overall, cybercrime is a new type of corruption also, such corruption which is being done through quick online tricks. It is worth mentioning here that cyber police stations have been established in many parts of the country but the personnel working in them are not trained at all, on the contrary, they do blackmail the complainant.