MHA charts out course for law, police officers to tackle cybercrime better

The Indian Express
Rahul Tripathi
Feb 16, 2018

The MHA has written to state governments, urging them to share cases of “phone fraud” and spread awareness on such crimes.

In the first such exercise to upgrade the quality of cybercrime investigations, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has rolled out a programme for judicial officers, prosecutors and police officers to study significant cybercrime cases. Among these are the 2004 DPS MMS case, frauds related to cryptocurrency, cyberstalking, creation of fake social media profiles, ransomware, dark web, steganography, frauds on e-wallets, among others.

The MHA has written to state governments, urging them to share cases of “phone fraud” and spread awareness on such crimes.

In its communication to Chief Secretaries of states and union territories, the MHA wrote, “There has been a phenomenal increase in use of computers, smart-phones and internet… Under the Nirbhaya fund, the scheme envisages to train 27,500 police officers, prosecutors, and judicial officers in cybercrime awareness programme of 3 days and 13,500 officials in 5 days.”

The communication mentioned that the ministry will extend financial assistance of Rs 3,000 per trainee for the three-day course, and Rs 5,000 for the five-day programme.

A train the trainer (ToT) programme has also been designed by the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), the National Police Academy, and the Madhya Pradesh government in the third week of February. States have been asked to nominate judicial officers, police officers and prosecutors to take part in this programme, MHA officials said.

The Home Ministry has stated that “all efforts need to be made for training as many women officers as possible”.

For judicial officers and prosecutors, the cybercrime programme has been divided into 10 sessions – starting with the basic knowledge of communication device and media, and familiarisation with storage media such as hard discs and pen drives, among others. An official said, “Prosecutors and judicial officers are not able to present a case in courts in a proper manner in a large number of cybercrime cases due to their lack of understanding. The aim of this programme is to make them familiar with technology, and challenges technology poses in near future.”

A session on “appreciation of electronic evidence” has also been conceptualised, followed by “challenges in conducting trial in cyber crime” in which participants will undergo “a group simulation exercise through role-play to apply the relevant law, write a report on the cybercrime (and) counsel the victim”.

In the third session, prosecutors will be introduced to various kinds of cybercrimes, starting with email threats, identity thefts, email hacking, online frauds such as Nigerian job frauds. They will also be given knowledge about hacking of websites, phishing, malware, cyberwarfare, among others.

A special focus will be on understanding cybercrime against women and children, according to MHA.

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