SHAKEELA ANDRABI
SRINAGAR: Cyber crime has become the most disruptive threat for financial markets, but at the same time is the most underrated by both regulators and financial institutions. It has been corroborated by figures shared by the Central government which revealed that from 2018 to 2020, a total of 263 cases were registered for cyber crimes. Despite repeated appeals by the cyber crime police, what is more worrying is that people are constantly being subjected to these frauds, resulting in an increase in number of cases not only in Jammu & Kashmir but across India. Cyber Police Station Kashmir Zone, Srinagar on May 12, claimed to have recovered Rs 58 lakh money from three men hailing from north Kashmir’s Bandipora District, south Kashmir’s Awantipora and Srinagar defrauded by online fraudsters.
As per a Cyber Police spokesman, the complainants from Bandipora and Awantipora alleged that they have been defrauded by online scammers of an amount of Rs 44 lakhs in online investment/trading scam. Both complainants received links of fake investment websites on their cell numbers wherein they were promised to get double monetary benefits. The victims fell prey and accessed the website where they got themselves registered on said websites by opening of e-wallets. As per the Cyber Police spokesman, Cyber Police Station, Kashmir has redressed large number of social media and financial fraud-related complaints and in the current year and an amount of approximately Rs 1.50 crore was prevented from being swindled. Cyber crime is a criminal activity that either targets or uses a computer, a computer network, or a networked device. Most cyber criminals are organised, use advanced techniques, and are highly technically skilled. Some specific examples of the different types of cyber crime are e-mail and internet fraud, identity fraud (where personal information is stolen and used), theft of financial or card payment data, etc). Like in other parts of the country, Jammu & Kashmir Union Territory is witnessing a rise in cybercrime cases and this can be gauged from the data provided by Jammu and Kashmir Police. At the beginning of the year 2020, a total of 182 cyber crime cases were pending investigation in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Of these, 61 were registered in different Police Stations of the Jammu region and 63 in the Kashmir division. The remaining were registered by Crime Branch Jammu and Crime Branch Kashmir.
During year, 142 more cyber crime cases were registered, which include 74 in Jammu division, 64 in Kashmir and 4 by Crime Branch Kashmir. With this, the total number of cases for investigation increased to 324. However, only 19 cases were Challaned by Police while 8 cases could not be traced and 9 were not admitted. Due to poor disposal, a total of 288 cases were pending investigation at the end of 2020, a police report revealed. The government has launched National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (www.cybercrime.gov.in), to enable the public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cyber crimes, with special focus on crimes against women and children. Under the I4C, seven Joint Cyber Coordination Teams have been constituted to address the issue of jurisdictional complexity, based upon cyber crime hotspots/areas, by on-boarding all the States/UTs to provide a robust coordination framework to the LEAs. General public is advised to stay away from such frauds promising undue profits. Beware and Stay safe.
