The Madras High Court Bench here on Tuesday directed cyber crime cell of the police department to submit details of complaints received by it across the State in the last 10 years with respect to offences such as sharing objectionable photographs of women on the Internet.
Justice N. Kirubakaran ordered that the details should be submitted by September 22 and they should mention the status of those complaints.
He passed the order after the Superintendent of Crime Branch-CID Cyber Cell submitted details of complaints lodged with its headquarters in Chennai alone.
The judge passed the order while hearing a petition filed by a 35-year-old married woman from Tuticorin accusing the police of hesitating to initiate action against a son of a Sub-Inspector of Police despite lodging a specific complaint accusing him of sharing her objectionable pictures on the Internet.
In a report submitted before the court on Tuesday, the Superintendent, CB-CID Cyber Cell stated that most e-mail service providers such as gmail, yahoo and hotmail; social network service providers such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and LinkedIn maintain their servers in the United States.
“For most of our investigation, we depend on these service providers for obtaining Internet Protocol logs, user information and content. We face problems as these service providers refuse to give information either stating legal constraints of their country or due to expiry of stipulated time,” the report stated.
It also stated that the State government had sanctioned Rs.1.09 crore on May 13 for strengthening the CB-CID cyber crime cell by purchasing the necessary hardware and software and that six cyber crime cells with cyber labs were functioning in all the six Police Commissionerates in the State.
The Superintendent further said that the CB-CID cyber crime cell alone had received 655 complaints, including 33 petitions related to crimes against women, since 2004.
But it had registered cases only on the basis of 101 complaints and of them 15 related to crimes against women.