The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : City Police gearing up to tackle cyber crime

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 22, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

City Police gearing up to tackle cyber crime

Anand Haridas

Officers to undergo intensive training this month

KOCHI: The City Police are gearing up to meet the inevitable evil of modern times — cyber crime. A couple of weeks back, one case was registered from Thrikkakkara pertaining to theft of source code.

Two introductory sessions on various aspects of cyber crime will be organised this month. The first of the two will be on frauds committed in the banking sector and their prevention and detection methods.

This will be held in association with the ICICI Bank at Hotel Taj Malabar on April 23. "The workshop will deal with frauds committed using credit cards and their investigation processes," said Dinendra Kashyap, City Police Commissioner.

Officers of the Crime Branch and Superintendent of Police (Rural) have also been invited to attend the workshop, he said.

The second one will be a two-day workshop on socio-legal aspects of cyber crime. This will be held on April 29 and 30. R. Sreelekha, Deputy Inspector- General, Ernakulam Range, will inaugurate both the workshops.

The move is coming up even as the Cyber Police Station set up under the State Crime Records Bureau is yet to take off. Even though the IT Act 2000 stipulates that only an officer of Dy. SP rank could lead the investigation of a cyber crime, not many officers in the force are aware about the various aspects of it.

Courses related to the subject are offered at the Kerala Police Academy, but it does not reach the middle-level officers.

The City Police could concentrate on training programmes now that the crime situation is almost under control, said Mr. Kashyap.

"In these workshops, personnel from the rank of sub-inspectors and above will be introduced to various aspects of cyber crime.

We have planned it so, because most often cases go unreported, as the officers are not familiar with different shades of the crime. Only if the case is registered and First Information Reports (FIRs) filed at the police stations, the City Police Commissioner can assign the investigation to a senior officer," said S. Surendran, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Crime Detachment).

The workshop is expected to introduce officers in the City Police to the practical side of committing a crime and then tracking down the criminal. The awareness among public on cyber crimes is also low, sources at City Police said.

Till date, no major cyber crime has been reported from the city.

Most of the crimes reported were on misusing the medium to malign reputation or spread false news, mostly within organisations.

In a couple of instances, the suspects were employees of organisations, who had personal scores to settle.

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