The Cyber Crime Wing of Tamil Nadu Police is setting up a first of its kind State Cyber Crime Investigation Centre at its headquarters, to deal exclusively with cases like organised cyber crimes that have international ramifications and require intra-country investigation, ransomware attacks, cryptocurrency frauds.
“We already have cyber crime police stations in districts and cities, which handle investigation into routine cyber offences including phishing, vishing, morphing, extortion and cyber stalking from individual complainants,” Additional Director General of Police, Cyber Crime, Amresh Poojari told The Hindu.
“The organised cyber offences are growing as technology is progressing very rapidly. Cyber criminals are adopting more sophisticated technologies. As a law enforcement agency, we have to keep pace with technological developments. So, in order to prevent and detect the sophisticated cyber offences, we require the most sophisticated centre, which will have state of the art tools and highly trained personnel,” he added.
The Cyber Crime Investigation Centre, to be set up at Cyber Wing Headquarters in Ashok Nagar, has been notified as a police station with a wide power across the state. It will handle those cases where the complainant and suspect jurisdictions cannot be defined and also cases pertaining to victims belonging to more than one jurisdiction. It also will handle social media abuses that targets important Constitutional functionaries, disturbs the integrity of the State, indulges in anti-national activities, spreads false news on sensitive issues, posts pictures and videos affecting the sovereignty and integrity of India and disturbs public order.
“We have conducted a screening test. The trained personnel mostly with engineering backgrounds from technical services wing and some police personnel from the local police station with good acumen for detecting cyber offences are being inducted in the centre,” Mr. Pujari said.
The centre will handle organised crimes committed in the cyber space, which requires an international-level investigation; organised crimes of interstate nature, which requires regular coordination from other States, and highly specialised cases like ransomware and cryptocurrency, where it is difficult to create expertise at the station level.
In the last six months, the State has already set up 47 cyber crime police stations in all districts, cities and special units of police. In the same period, the Cyber Crime Wing Headquarters blocked 649 offending contents on 523 websites, 22 YouTube videos, 55 Facebook pages/profiles, 17 Instagram pages and 32 mobile applications. “We have contacted the intermediaries and written to them to remove the content,” said Mr. Pujari.
He also said the public can contact the cyber crime helpline at 1930 if they fall victim to any cyber financial fraud. Money can be reverted/blocked from being transferred to fraudsters if the victim comes to report as early as possible. Over ₹3 crore was reverted to the complainants in the last financial year, he added.
