UP gets 18 cyber crime ‘thanas’

LUCKNOW: Eighteen cyber police stations have been finally set up at police range levels in different UP districts with a view to checking growing cases of crime in the virtual domain.

Home department officials on Thursday issued official emails and contact numbers of these police stations so that people could approach them and their complaints could be entertained easily.The home department officials said these cyber police stations will be set up at all 16 police ranges headquarters as well as at two police commissionerate headquarters in Lucknow and Gautam Buddh Nagar.

They said the cyber police stations were already operational at Lucknow and Gautam Buddh Nagar but now they would now have separate buildings and allotted police personnel.

The officials said the cyber police stations will be opened at Agra, Aligarh, Ayodhya, Azamgarh, Bareilly, Basti, Chitrakoot, Gonda (Devipatan range), Gorakhpur, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mirzapur, Moradabad, Prayagraj, Saharanpur and Varanasi districts.

Sharing further details, a home department official said the estimated cost of ₹111 crore will be spent on setting up 18 cyber police stations’ infrastructure and that the posts of over 7,000 police personnel had been sanctioned for the purpose.

He said the sanctioned posts included 1,717 inspectors, 1,717 sub-inspectors and 3,458 head constables and constables.

Besides, the allotted posts also included 93 additional inspectors and sub-inspectors as well as 186 constables to assist the police stations in dealing with technical part of the crime investigation, he added.

The official said the cyber police stations across the state will help in curbing increasing incidents of cyber crime in the state. He said over 14633 cyber crime cases were reported across the state in the past seven months according to national cyber crime portal.