Policy document will be prepared to tackle rising cybercrime cases in Visakhapatnam, says Police Commissioner

Visakhapatnam city police to prepare policy document to tackle increasing cybercrime cases, with focus on manpower, capacity building & strengthening existing cybercrime police station.

Expressing concern over the steep increase in cybercrime cases over the past few years, the city police has decided to prepare a policy document and focus on various areas such as manpower, capacity building and strengthening the existing cybercrime police station to handle the cases in the coming years.

Presenting the details regarding the cybercrime cases, Police Commissioner A. Ravi Shankar said that as many as 410 cybercrime cases were reported during the year 2023, as against 610 during the year 2022. In this year, ₹31.79 crore was lost as against ₹16.33 crore in 2022.

According to the Police Commissioner, the cases have not come down this year, but joint FIRs were registered for cases with similar modus operandi. In this year, the police have frozen as many as 1,995 bank accounts, he said.

Mr. Ravi Shankar said that the police are preparing a policy document for which they have done assessment on manpower requirement, budget requirement and capacity building. He said that the police would go for annual maintenance contract regarding the procurement of cyber detection tools and would ensure the tools are upgraded time to time, in view of growing crimes.

He stressed the need for organising training programme for the staff with experts, improving technical skills and also need for good communication skills. The staff need to coordinate with bank authorities, agencies, payment gateway companies and Internet Service Providers (ISP) while working on the cases., he said, adding that there is also a need to provide good incentives to the staff.

“In Visakhapatnam city, we have widespread spectrum of victims. Cybercrime is an emerging issue. Day by day, new cases are being reported. There is a need to strengthen ourselves to tackle these cases in the coming years,” he said.

Mr. Ravi Shankar has said that the city police have relaunched Visakhapatnam City Security Council this month. Many IT experts are ready to support us in this regard, he said.