Jharkhand’s cyber space appears to be feeble in the face of cyber attacks as it faces serious threats from the invisible army of cyber criminals who successfully exploited the inherent weaknesses of the Information Technology infrastructure 93 times in 2014 and committed offences under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.
As per the report of National Crime Records Bureau-2014, cyber crimes under various categories registered two-fold increase from the level of 2013.
Even as 2013 was a relatively less worrying for the Jharkhand police with just 23 cases, 2014 rattled them to look for desperate measures to plug the loopholes in the cyber infrastructure.
“We accept that cyber crimes have increased and there is no need for NCRB data to say this. We are not at all effective against cyber attacks as the work of IT infrastructure is still in process. The building of cyber crime police station is complete and have put advertisement for additional manpower,” said ADG (Operations) and Spokesperson of Jharkhand Police, SN Pradhan.
The NCRB report highlights that the year-on-year variation in cyber crime is 257.7 per cent (second in terms of percentage rise in India) and of the 93 crimes recorded in 2014, 61 are the cognizable crime under Section-66 (A to E) of the IT Act making Jharkhand stand 17 among all provinces whereas remaining crime (32) fall under others category.
The police’s plan to curtail the rising hood of the invisible army is to fight with more manpower. Notably, cyber crime forms a meager one per cent of the total crime reported in Jharkhand in 2014.
“We have put up notice for interview in the month of September and after recruitment the work (cyber defense) will start. We will need around 10 people for the police station,” maintained Pradhan.
Of the other category, cases have been registered for committing crime for personal revenge, greed and financial gain, fraud and illegal gain, prank and satisfaction of gaining control besides sexual exploitation. Notwithstanding the steep rise in cyber crime there is silver lining in the cloud of threat that looms over Jharkhand.
Although the police battles to thwart cyber attacks with scant resources, it has managed to arrest 57 people in connection with the crimes which is a variation of 185 per cent over (20) arrests made in 2013 for the same category of crimes.