Nearly 100 cases of cyber crimes are reported annually in the State, but the Goa police have no cyber crime cell to deal with these effectively
KIMBERLY COLAÇO
PANJIM: India sees around 2800 cyber crimes registered each year. The two districts in Goa receive more cyber crime complaints than any of Maharashtra’s districts. Unfortunately there is no cyber crime cell which operates in the State. Director of a Pune-based Intelligent Quotient Security System Harold D’Costa says it is high time Goa gets its own cyber crime cell and forensic lab. According to D’Costa, the Goa police receive at least eight cyber case complaints a month and he assists them with around 100 cases a year.
From 2008 till 2013 D’Costa has trained 200 police officials in cyber crime. He is currently training 12 students from Rayeshwar Institute of Engineering and Information Technology in Shiroda who are in the process of developing software which will be used by the Goa police to track cyber criminals. The software will be out by November.
D’Costa says the State needs dedicated personnel to look into these cases. “The court usually relies on reports from forensic labs which take almost three years to detect from seized hard disks. If during this period a police officer is transferred to another department, time and energy is wasted in training the new replacement.”
He attributes the high rate of cyber crime to the large number of tourists that visit the State. Cyber cafés don’t bother to maintain records of foreign/domestic tourists who use their services, and the internet cafes which provide users anonymity are where provocative emails usually originate from. It becomes impossible then to track the cyber criminal.
It is the responsibility of cyber cafés to keep exact records of people using the Internet. If a proper log book is not maintained, the owner of the café becomes the co-accused in the case till the actual accused is tracked.
According to D’Costa around 70 per cent of the cases reported in Goa are based on social networking sites where morphed photographs are uploaded to damage reputations. Another common complaint is when people are defamed using social networking sites to settle personal or professional grudges.
Financial scams account for some 20 per cent of crime on the Net with the fall guy enticed to give away his password other crucial information. One such incident occurred when a Mumbaikar realised he had lost Rs 80 lakh from his bank account. Punjab National Bank in Maharashtra was penalised by the court in April 2013 and ordered to pay Rs 80 lakh and another Rs 40 lakh as compensation. This happened due to lack of security. The fine can go up to Rs 5 crore.
“Till date Goa has not had a single conviction on a cyber crime case. It is very important to set up a forensic lab as most of the cases are sent to Hyderabad for analysis,” D’Costa said.
He is also concerned about 12th standard students being given laptops as freebies by the government without any education about misuse of the Net. “They may send fictitious emails for fun but this could lead to serious issues,” says D’Costa.
Any threatening emails should be reported to the police who will have to try and track down the IP address of the email which will lead them to the specific computer from which the mail was sent. The police can then seize the hard disk for forensic analysis, but in the absence of a lab in Goa, the results are bound to take ages, by which time both the complainant and the investigators lose interest.
According to the Information Technology Act, offences like sending threatening emails, owning fictitious social networking accounts, uploading photographs clicked without permission, using stolen laptops and mobile phones and hacking carry a sentence of three years imprisonment. Distribution of pornographic content through mobile phones and laptops or using children for phonographic content carries a five-year sentence.
In 2008 a 72-year-old man in Bicholim was suspected of creating a fictitious account using the managing director’s name to send pornographic content to his female colleagues. The hard disk was seized, but till date the person has not been tracked down.
Kartik Kashyap, Superintendent of Police, Anti Narcotics says efforts are on to establish a cyber crime cell. “We have put in an interim proposal which has to be approved by the government,” he told this newspaper.
Learning cyber laws
The Asian School of Cyber Laws (ASCL) Pune has started courses in Goa this year. There’s an advanced programme in cyber law, digital evidence analyst and cyber crime investigation courses that run three to four months. ASCL has a few students who signed up and says it also trains police officials, judges, lawyers and anyone else interested in learning how to nab cyber criminals.
