Cyber crime on the rise in Andhra Pradesh

Hyderabad: Cyber crime cases, especially the Nigerian frauds, phishing and transmission of obscene content in electronic form has seen a rise in Andhra Pradesh and also witnessed a two-fold increase in the arrest of cyber offenders in 2011.

From 197 cyber crime cases reported in 2010, the number went up to 350 in 2011 and the cases were registered at three Cyber Crime police stations, including the Cyber Crime wing of CID here and different Cyber Crime units functioning across the state, a senior police officer said.

"Close to 100 offenders were arrested during 2011 as compared to about 60 in the previous year in connection with various cyber offences," Superintendent of Police (CID-Cyber Crime) U Rama Mohan said.

Over 90 cases pertaining to the posting of objectionable content targeting women and girls on social networking sites and sending vulgar emails were registered in 2011, besides some other important cyber crime incidents.

Cyber sleuths are in touch with the Interpol, MHA and other agencies like Computer Emergency Response Team and National Technological Research Organisation to improve monitoring and coordinating detection of cyber crimes.

"We have sought help from the Interpol that will enable us getting information on overseas servers (used in cyber crimes) and help in extradition of such offenders," he said.

Recently, Interpol's help was sought for a case, in which a person from England was "harassing" a girl in Andhra Pradesh, he added.

Cyber sleuths have also arrested 30 Nigerians in cases of online lottery fraud (to the tune of over Rs 3 crore) last year, who were tracked down from New Delhi and Mumbai, the SP said.

"With lot of awareness more number of cyber crime victims are coming out to lodge complaints with police who are now capable of detecting the cyber crimes efficiently and quickly after being imparted with required technical skills of cyber crime investigation," Rama Mohan said.

There have also been cases pertaining to hacking of government websites and e-mail accounts of individuals, misuse of bank accounts and credit card/debit card data, tampering with computer source documents, cases of other cyber crimes being investigated by Cyber sleuths this year too which also saw conviction of two cyber offenders with regard to cases of harassing girls, he said.

With increasing number of cyber offences, there is a proposal to start two new cyber police stations at Visakhapatnam and Tirupati for effective tackling of cyber crimes, Rama Mohan added.

india.com