Lok Sabha Question No. 410 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2025-02-04
Subject: Increase in Cyber Crimes
Ministry: HOME AFFAIRS
Asked by: Shri Rajesh Ranjan, Dr. Kirsan Namdeo

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS

## LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 410

TO  BE  ANSWERED  ON  THE  04 TH   FEBRUARY,  2025/  MAGHA  15,  1946 (SAKA)

INCREASE IN CYBER CRIMES

410.     SHRI RAJESH RANJAN:

DR. KIRSAN NAMDEO:

Will the Minister of HOME AFFAIRS be pleased to state:

(a)  whether  it  is  a  fact  that  incidents  of  cyber  crimes  have  increased across the country;

(b)  if  so,  the  details  of  the  incidents  of  the  cyber crimes during  the last three years, State-wise along with the reasons for continuous increase in cyber crimes;

(c)  whether  the  Government  has  formulated  any  concrete  strategy  to tackle cyber crimes and if so, the details thereof along with the details of efforts being made by the Government to check these crimes and prevent such crimes through public awareness and also to strengthen the cyber security network throughout the country in coordination with the States;

(d) whether the Government proposes to constitute special task forces for cyber crimes investigation in every police station across the country and if so, the details thereof; and

(e) the time by which the cyber crime investigation task forces are likely to start functioning in every police station?

## ANSWER

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS (SHRI BANDI SANJAY KUMAR)

(a) to (e): The  National  Crime  Records  Bureau  (NCRB)  compiles  and publishes the statistical data on crimes in its publication 'Crime in India'.

The latest published report is for the year 2022. As per the data published by  the  NCRB,  State/UT  wise  details  of  cases  registered  under  cyber crimes  (involving  communication  devices  as  medium/target)  during  the period from 2020 to 2022 are at the Annexure.

To strengthen the mechanism to deal with cyber crimes, including initiatives to strengthen cybersecurity infrastructure and law enforcement capabilities  in  a  comprehensive  and  coordinated  manner,  the  Central Government has taken steps which, inter-alia, include the following:

- i. The  Ministry  of  Home  Affairs  has  set  up  the  'Indian  Cyber  Crime Coordination Centre' (I4C)as an attached office to deal with all types of cybercrimes in the country, in a coordinated and comprehensive manner.
- ii. The 'National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal' (https://cybercrime.gov.in) has been launched, as a part of the I4C, to enable public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cyber crimes,  with  special  focus  on  cyber  crimes  against  women  and children. Cyber crime incidents reported on this portal, their conversion into FIRs and subsequent action thereon are handled by the  State/UT  Law  Enforcement  Agencies  concerned  as  per  the provisions of the law.

- iii. The  'Citizen  Financial  Cyber  Fraud  Reporting  and  Management System', under I4C, has been launched in year 2021 for immediate reporting of financial frauds and to stop siphoning off funds by the fraudsters. So far, financial amount of more than Rs. 3,919 Crore has been saved in more than 11.20 lakh complaints. A toll-free Helpline number '1930' has been operationalized to get assistance in lodging online cyber complaints.
- iv. The  Central  Government  has  introduced  a  new  feature  titled  as 'Report and Check Suspect' on https://cybercrime.gov.in. This facility provides  citizens  a  search  option  to  search  I4C's  repository  of identifiers of cyber criminals through 'Suspect Search'.
- v. A State of the Art Centre, Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been  established  at  I4C  where  representatives  of  major  banks, Financial  Intermediaries,  Payment  Aggregators,  Telecom  Service Providers, IT Intermediaries and representatives of States/UTs Law Enforcement Agency are working together for immediate action and seamless  cooperation  to  tackle  cybercrime.  More  than  9.23  lakh mule accounts have been lien marked.
- vi. I4C proactively identify and blocked more than 3255 Skype IDs and 77,195 Whatsapp accounts used for Digital Arrest.

- vii. Till 31.12.2024, more than 7 lakhs SIM cards and 2.08 lakhs IMEIs as reported by Police authorities have been blocked by Government of India.
- viii. The state of the art 'National Cyber Forensic Laboratory (Investigation)'  has  been established, as a part of the I4C, at New Delhi to provide early stage cyber forensic assistance to Investigating Officers (IOs) of State/UT Police. So far, National Cyber Forensics  Laboratory  (Investigation)  has  provided  its  services  to State/UT LEAs in around 11,514 cases pertaining to cyber crimes.
- ix. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) platform, namely 'CyTrain' portal has been developed under I4C, for capacity building of police officers/judicial officers through online course on critical aspects of cyber  crime  investigation,  forensics,  prosecution  etc.  More  than 1,01,112  Police  Officers  from  States/UTs  are  registered  and  more than 77,506 Certificates issued through the portal.
- x. The  Ministry  of  Home  Affairs  has  provided  financial  assistance  to the  tune  of  Rs.  131.60  crores  under  the  'Cyber  Crime  Prevention against  Women  and  Children  (CCPWC)'  Scheme,  to  the  States/UTs for their capacity building such as setting up of cyber forensic-cumtraining laboratories, hiring of junior cyber consultants and training of  LEAs'  personnel,  public  prosecutors  and  judicial  officers.  Cyber forensic-cum-training  laboratories  have  been  commissioned  in  33

States/UTs  and  more  than  24,600  LEA  personnel,  judicial  officers and prosecutors have been provided training on cyber crime awareness, investigation, forensics etc.

- xi. I4C has imparted cyber hygiene training to 8,680 officials of various Ministries/ Departments of Government of India.
- xii. I4C  has  imparted  cyber  hygiene  training  to  more  than  41,891and 54,072 NCC cadets and NSS cadets respectively.
- xiii. Seven Joint Cyber Coordination Teams (JCCTs) have been constituted for Mewat, Jamtara, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Vishakhapatnam, and Guwahati under I4C covering the whole country based upon cyber crime hotspots/ areas having multi jurisdictional  issues  by  on  boarding  States/UTs  to  enhance  the coordination  framework  among  the  Law  Enforcement  Agencies  of the  States/UTs.  Seven  workshops  were  organized  for  JCCTs  at Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Vishakhapatnam, Lucknow, Ranchi and Chandigarh.
- xiv. Samanvaya  Platform  has  been  made  operational  to  serve  as  an Management Information System(MIS) platform, data repository and a  coordination  platform  for  LEAs  for  cybercrime  data  sharing  and analytics. It provides analytics based interstate linkages of crimes and criminals, involved in cybercrime complaints in various
5. States/UTs. The  module  'Pratibimb' maps locations of criminals and

crime  infrastructure  on  a  map  to  give  visibility  to  jurisdictional officers.  The  module  also  facilitates  seeking  and  receiving  of techno-legal assistance by Law Enforcement  Agencies from I4C and other SMEs. It has lead to arrest of 5,668 accused, 15,603 linkages and 25,495 Cyber Investigation assistance request.

- A  Suspect  Registry  of  identifiers  of  cyber  criminals  has  been launched by I4C on 10.09.2024 in collaboration with Banks/Financial Institutions. Till 31.12.2024, 4,98,765 suspect records and 18,28,972 mule accounts have been shared with the participating entities of
- xv. suspect registry and saved more than Rs.2009 crores.
- xvi. To spread awareness on cyber crime, the Central Government has taken  steps  which,  inter-alia,  include;  dissemination  of  messages through  SMS,  I4C  social  media  account  i.e.  X  (formerly  Twitter) (@CyberDost),  Facebook(CyberDostI4C),  Instagram  (cyberDostI4C), Telegram(cyberdosti4c), Radio campaign, caller tune, engaged MyGov  for  publicity  in  multiple  mediums,  organizing  Cyber  Safety and  Security  Awareness  weeks  in  association  with  States/UTs, publishing of Handbook for Adolescents/Students, newspaper advertisement on digital arrest scam, announcement in Delhi metros on digital arrest and other modus operandi of cyber criminals, use of social  media  influencers  to  create  special  posts  on  digital  arrest, digital displays on railway stations and airports across, etc.

- xvii. The  Indian  Computer  Emergency  Response  Team  (CERT-In)  is operating an automated cyber threat exchange platform for proactively  collecting,  analysing  and  sharing  tailored  alerts  with organisations across sectors for proactive threat mitigation actions by them.
- xviii. CERT-In has set up the National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to  scan  the  cyberspace  in  the  country  and  detect  cyber  security threats.
- xix. CERT-In operates the Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) to detect malicious programs and provides free tools to remove the same, and also provides cyber security tips and best practices for citizens and organisations.
4. xx.
5. CERT-In conducts regular training programmes for network / system administrators  and  Chief  Information  Security  Officers  (CISOs)  of Government and critical sector organisations regarding securing the IT  infrastructure  and  mitigating  cyber  attacks.    A  total  of  12,014 officials have been trained in 23 training programs in 2024.
- xxi. The Hon'ble Prime Minister has  directed to set up a special branch of trained 'Cyber Commandos'. The objective of 'Cyber Commandos' is  to  train  Cyber  Commandos  from  various  ranks  in  States,  Union Territories and Central Police Organisations with candidates selected on the basis of their expertise in computer networks and

operating  systems.  Once  trained,  these  commandos  will  act  as  a national resource within their respective organizations, specializing in areas like digital forensics, incident response, and ICT infrastructure security.

'Police'  and  'Public  Order'  are  State  subjects  as  per  the  Seventh Schedule  of  the  Constitution  of  India.  The  States/UTs  are  primarily responsible for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crimes  including  cyber  crime  through  their  Law  Enforcement  Agencies (LEAs) and enhancing capacity of Police Stations. The Central Government supplements the initiatives of the States/UTs through advisories  and  financial  assistance  under  various  schemes  for  capacity building of their LEAs.

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## ANNEXURE LS USQ. NO. 410 FOR 04.02.2025

## STATE/UT-WISE CASES REGISTERED UNDER CYBER CRIMES DURING 2020-2022

| SL   | State/UT                   |   2020 |   2021 |   2022 |
|------|----------------------------|--------|--------|--------|
| 1    | Andhra Pradesh             |   1899 |   1875 |   2341 |
| 2    | Arunachal Pradesh          |     30 |     47 |     14 |
| 3    | Assam                      |   3530 |   4846 |   1733 |
| 4    | Bihar                      |   1512 |   1413 |   1621 |
| 5    | Chhattisgarh               |    297 |    352 |    439 |
| 6    | Goa                        |     40 |     36 |     90 |
| 7    | Gujarat                    |   1283 |   1536 |   1417 |
| 8    | Haryana                    |    656 |    622 |    681 |
| 9    | Himachal Pradesh           |     98 |     70 |     77 |
| 10   | Jharkhand                  |   1204 |    953 |    967 |
| 11   | Karnataka                  |  10741 |   8136 |  12556 |
| 12   | Kerala                     |    426 |    626 |    773 |
| 13   | Madhya Pradesh             |    699 |    589 |    826 |
| 14   | Maharashtra                |   5496 |   5562 |   8249 |
| 15   | Manipur                    |     79 |     67 |     18 |
| 16   | Meghalaya                  |    142 |    107 |     75 |
| 17   | Mizoram                    |     13 |     30 |      1 |
| 18   | Nagaland                   |      8 |      8 |      4 |
| 19   | Odisha                     |   1931 |   2037 |   1983 |
| 20   | Punjab                     |    378 |    551 |    697 |
| 21   | Rajasthan                  |   1354 |   1504 |   1833 |
| 22   | Sikkim                     |      0 |      0 |     26 |
| 23   | Tamil Nadu                 |    782 |   1076 |   2082 |
| 24   | Telangana                  |   5024 |  10303 |  15297 |
| 25   | Tripura                    |     34 |     24 |     30 |
| 26   | Uttar Pradesh              |  11097 |   8829 |  10117 |
| 27   | Uttarakhand                |    243 |    718 |    559 |
| 28   | West Bengal                |    712 |    513 |    401 |
|      | TOTAL STATE(S)             |  49708 |  52430 |  64907 |
| 29   | A&N Islands                |      5 |      8 |     28 |
| 30   | Chandigarh                 |     17 |     15 |     27 |
| 31   | D&N Haveli and Daman & Diu |      3 |      5 |      5 |
| 32   | Delhi                      |    168 |    356 |    685 |
| 33   | Jammu & Kashmir            |    120 |    154 |    173 |
| 34   | Ladakh                     |      1 |      5 |      3 |
| 35   | Lakshadweep                |      3 |      1 |      1 |
| 36   | Puducherry                 |     10 |      0 |     64 |
|      | TOTAL UT(S)                |    327 |    544 |    986 |
|      | TOTAL (ALL INDIA)          |  50035 |  52974 |  65893 |

Source: Crime in India