Valay Singh's column: Police unable to tackle cyber crimes

How to deal with cybercrime? The police modernization budget of 12 states is zero. Only 2% of complaints have a chargesheet. In this monsoon session, the MPs raised the problem of increasing cyber crimes seriously. According to the India Justice report, more than three dozen questions were asked. The question is, how much preparation do we have to deal with them? As the use of digital technology has increased, the rate of cyber crimes has increased much faster. According to the online platform 'National Cyber Reporting Platform' (NCRP), there has been a 900% increase in cyber crimes between 2021 and 2025. Most of these cases are fraud. Of the 65,893 cases registered in 2022, 65% of the cases were of 42,770 frauds. The problem of cyber fraud has also taken a formidable form at the international level. According to the 'Global Anti-Scam Alliance' in a report in January 2025, cyber fraudsters have grabbed more than $ 1 trillion (about 87 thousand billion rupees) globally in the last one year. Many countries have lost more than 3% of their GDP. The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), set up under the Ministry of Home Affairs, estimates that cyber frauds in the country could cause a loss of Rs 1.2 lakh crore a year. This amount is just under 1% of the country's GDP. Most of this money goes out of the country. In the year 2022, 10.30 lakh people complained about NCRP. Of these, FIRs were registered in only 6% i.e. 66,000 cases. In 94% of the cases where FIRs could not be registered, no government documents provide information about the reasons. Of the 66,000 cases registered, charge sheets were filed in only less than 30%. These 20,000 charge sheets are less than 2% of the 10.30 lakh cyber fraud complaints received on the NCRP portal. The rate of police investigation and charge sheet in cyber crimes is less than half of that of other crimes. The NCRP report shows that in the year 2022, charge sheets were filed in 71% of the crimes registered under the IPC. Charge sheets were filed in 30% of the cybercrime crimes registered this year. The reason for not completing the investigation in cyber crimes and filing the charge sheet is because the police do not have the state-of-the-art capacity. The police modernization budget fell by Rs 121 crore in 2021-22 (Rs 562 crore) as compared to the budget 2020-21 (Rs 683 crore). During this period, the allocation of police modernization budget for 12 states was zero. Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Goa got the Budget, but they spent none of it. The national average of this budget was only 47%. The police investigation covered up cybercrime cases — non-cognizable offences, false facts found in the final report, mistake of fact or law or civil cases, case correctness but insufficient evidence or no clue and cases ending up during investigation — covered up in all these categories. In the year 2022, the total number of cases disposed of under these categories was 44,945, out of which 40,614 cases were closed due to lack of clue or evidence. That is, 90% of the cases were closed due to lack of evidence. These figures call into question the very efficacy of the testing system. More cases of cybercrime have been found in 11 states of the country; And of these, Maharashtra and UP have the highest. (These are the author's opinions. This article is co-authored by Bharat Singh)