The Hindu : Cyber crime spells confusion in Tirupati

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 28, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

Cyber crime spells confusion in Tirupati

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI Dec. 27. Utter chaos prevailed in the town among Internet cafe groups, the media, police and legal circles as to how to react to the second-of-its-kind cyber crime in the State here yesterday.

The Tirupati West police had registered a case under Section 66 of Information Technology Act 2000 on K.Satish, owner of Internet Pub Plus, a web browsing centre, for making a number of dummy appointments with TT Services, a company providing counselling to US aspirants on visa procedures.

It was alleged that someone from the centre had submitted 185 applications and reserved time for appointment with its site, www.ttsvisas.com. The company, after a long wait for the clients at the appointed time, grew suspicious of a malicious act, found from the Internet Protocol (IP) address that the crime originated at this centre and lodged a complaint. As per the act, the centre owner would be held liable for such offences.

Though Internet Pub Plus is the epi-centre of the crime, the shell-shocked owners of the scores of such cafes started loudly whispering as to who could be the next victim of the crime, the prevention of which, they argue, was not in their hands.

The district police department, which is dealing with such a case for the first time, is finding the details nebulous and has started browsing the pages of books on IT Act, hoping to land at some useful point. Police sources said senior officials were also seeking the advice of advocates. The situation in the legal circles was no better. The lawyers were not sure whether the case falls under the Tirupati jurisdiction or not, as the recently-inaugurated Cyber police station is at Hyderabad.

Even as the centre owner, K.Satish, was grappling with the case, a section of the vernacular media came up with reports that he had been `arrested' and his centre locked up by the police. Members of the Tirupati Internet Centres Association, including the very person in question appeared before mediapersons today to clarify the point.

At the media conference, they rued that no deterrent system was in place anywhere in the world to prevent visitors to the cafe from browsing prohibited or unsuitable areas on the web, including porn sites, and that they were not even aware of the provisions in the Cyber laws. Satish said one Mr.Murali, claiming to be the manager of TT Services, had alerted him over phone of the mischievous acts taking place at his centre and had just asked him to keep tabs on the visitors, however without indicting him in the crime.

He said the culprit had submitted incomprehensible names like `jklk', `dsgd' and so on as his name and surname in all the 185 applications, which made it clear that it was done for fun and not intended to cause financial damage.

The owners of cyber cafes are keeping their fingers crossed on what safeguards they can take to avert such mishaps.

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