Cybercrime cell in infancy in Punjab, cases double in 4 years

Jupinderjit Singh

Chandigarh, April 12

The Punjab cyber policing is still in its infancy in the face of the growing incidents of cyber frauds, threats and propaganda via the internet by gangsters, besides regular cyber invasion by agencies abroad to recruit youngsters for terror activities.

Compared to seven dedicated cybercrime police stations in Haryana and 15 in New Delhi, Punjab has only one.

Cybercrimes cases, including those clubbed with other crimes, shows a rising graph.

In 2017, the state registered 262 FIRs while the number reached more than double at 589 in 2021. In between, 304 FIRs were reported in 2018; 367 in 2019; and 538 in 2020.

These are the cases received at police stations and state cybercrime cell. Complaints are also received on national and state cyber portals through the helpline 1930. These include minor complaints of rude comments, pornography, fake profiles, besides cyber threats and frauds. On an average, 48 such complaints were received every day in 2021. Of the 17,520 complaints recorded last year, 7,618 were taken up for probe and 57 (part of the larger figure of 589 cases in 2021) have been converted into FIRs.

In 2021, the cyber cell issued 289 notices to various social media platforms. As many as 1,816 pages/accounts were reported, of which 1,587 have been blocked. The remaining 229 are active for want of action.

Facebook and Instagram have a bad record of action, while Twitter and Telegram have responded well.

In connection with threats and propaganda by gangsters and other criminals, 24 notices were issued and 215 pages or accounts were reported. Of these, only 55 have been blocked. All social media platforms fair badly in action against gangsters.

Officials disclose that the complaint to FIR conversion ratio is on the lower side due to the lack of technically trained manpower and dedicated cybercrime police stations.

The Police Department has proposed an upgrade in the plan of Rs 46.75 crores to CM Bhagwant Mann. One of the main proposals is to set up cybercrime police stations in every district.