Cases of cyber crime recorded an 11.8% increase in 2020, a year when most rates of serious crimes fell, the Crime in India 2020 report shows.
Released late on Tuesday by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the report quantifies for the first time the unusual trends in crime and law and order in a year when much of the country was in a lockdown for over two months.
HT reported on Wednesday that overall, the number of cognizable cases rose by 28% but if Covid-related violations were removed, the number of new cases dropped compared to 2019. Some of the stark reductions were in cases of kidnapping and abduction, which fell by 19.3%, crime against women (down by 8.3%), crime against children (down by 13.2%) and crime against senior citizens (down by 10.8%). The murder cases increased by one percent.
But in case of complaints filed under sections dealing with cyber crime, the number of cases registered last year rose to 50,035 from 44,735 a year before. This ties in with trends seen across the world as more people moved to working and studying from home, spending more time with digital tools.
Most of the increase came from states such as Telangana, Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand and Maharashtra while cases from the top 20 major cities rose by only 0.8%, suggesting more people were being targeted in smaller cities.
The total rate of cyber crime per 100,000 people increased from 3.3 to 3.7 in 2020.
“The picture provided by NCRB on cyber crime is very limited,” said Pawan Duggal, an independent expert in cyber security, who has been watching this space for more than two decades. He added that cyber frauds have increased in several countries during pandemic.
“The ground reality is overwhelming. Every second person would have been targeted by a cyber fraudster. The actual cyber fraud is much higher. The Covid pandemic has turned cyber fraud as a cottage industry, which was once known to be run from Jamtara in Jharkhand, to several other parts of the country,” he added.

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