Mumbai sees 16% rise in cybercrimes last year

“The golden hour” plays a very important role when it comes to solving a cybercrime, like saving lives after an accident, Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said on Tuesday

“The golden hour” plays a very important role when it comes to solving a cybercrime, like saving lives after an accident, Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said on Tuesday. He said if reported early, the police could recover the money that was defrauded and reduce the loss to the victim.

The cyber cell of Thane police. HT/File

Nagrale said citizens victimised by cyber fraudsters should report the crime within an hour - the golden hour - to the nearest cybercrime police station, because then the chances of blocking the payments made and recovering the money are high.

The statistics released by Nagrale at the annual crime conference revealed that cybercrimes increased by 16% last year, compared to 2020. The Mumbai police registered 2,883 cases across cyber cells and local police stations and detected 455 or 15.78% cases in 2021. In 2020, a total of 2,435 cases were registered, of which only 207 were detected.

In 2019, as many as 2,518 cases were registered when the city had only one dedicated cyber police station at the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) and 348 cases were detected. The cases went down in 2020 due to the lockdown.

Nagrale said, “Earlier, there was only one cyber police station at BKC for the entire city. But we now have five such stations, one each in the region which comes under the crime branch and the deputy commissioner of cybercrime.”

The detection rate in cyber police stations is better than the 13% detection rate in regular police stations. “We are in the process of developing these units with better equipment and providing training to officers and staff to help them detect more cyber cases. The crime branch will conduct the training,” Nagrale said.

There are a few reasons for the low detection rate of cybercrime because it is a faceless crime, he said. “The servers which are used for cybercrime are mostly located out of India and social media platforms are not responding on time. There are also other legal processes which consume time and cyber fraudsters use Tor browser and a few other sites which are difficult to identify,” Nagrale said.

Joint commissioner of police (crime branch) Milind Bharambe said it was noticed that fraudsters were mostly located out of Maharashtra. “A few places, which are cybercrime hubs, are in Bihar, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand. As a result, it is very difficult to trace the culprits,” he said.