Police officers being trained to deal with burgeoning threat of cyber crime
Mumbai police have taken a power-packed initiative to train its officers to deal the burgeoning threat of digital crime. A senior officer told the Free Press Journal that this training will help officers to ‘expedite the detection of cyber crimes’ and ‘enhance the conviction rate.’
At present, 18 officers from Zone 10 are being trained by cyber experts at Mumbai’s Cyber Cell, Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) to deal with all sorts of nature of digital crimes like phishing, online fraud and cheating, stalking on social media, email abuse, hacking, copyright, etc.
In Zone 10, there are six police stations, including Andheri, Sakinaka, MIDC, Meghwadi, Jogeshwari and Powai.
“Three officers from each police station are being trained to deal with cyber crimes. Once the week-long training is complete, these young officials will only be dedicated to register and investigate the cyber crimes. These officials will be kept away from routine bandobast and investigating the routine crimes,” an officer from Mumbai police told Free Press Journal.
An officer from MIDC police station said many working women have complained of being stalked by their colleagues or friends on social media.
“Most of complainants are women working with corporate companies and have been victims of cyber crimes. Our officers were not tech-savvy to investigate these cases. Hence an initiative was taken to train the officers by cyber experts as well as crime branch officials. This training will expedite detection and increase the conviction rate,” said an officer from MIDC police station, Andheri (east).
The nature of cyber crime is changing day-by-day but since the police was not updated with the technologies. Hence, they were facing tremendous problem to deal with the cyber crimes.
An officer from Andheri police station said the officers are also being trained to understand the ‘psychology of online fraudsters.’
“Our officers were facing a lot of problem while investigating the cyber cases. Most of the cases are computer-related crimes. But the investigators were facing normal problem like retrieving the Internet Protocol address of the accused and there was delay in detection. But after the training, an officer privy to cyber crime cases will not have to wait for computer experts to retrieve the IP address. There were several other hindrances, like retrieving IP address of cyber criminals, our officers faced. All their queries are being addressed properly in the week-long training session at Cyber Cell, BKC,” said an officer attached to Andheri police station.
A senior IPS officer said the training programme was first conducted in Zone 9 and the officers from police stations including Bandra, Khar, Santacruz, Juhu, DN Nagar, Versova and Oshiwara have already been trained. Most of the bollywood bigwigs live in these areas.
“After Zone 9 and 10, the officers from Zone 12 comprising police stations including Aarey, Dindoshi, Kurar, Samta Nagar, Kasturba Marg, Vanrai and Dahisar will be sent for week-long training at Cyber Cell, BKC,” added the officer.