Cyber crime unit made more empowered to deal with crimes

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has approved doubling of the manpower, telephone connections and computer terminals available for the Mumbai Police’s cyber crime unit, which is struggling to deal with the number of complaints received on the helpline ‘1930’ .

Due to severe shortage of manpower and resources at the National Cyber Crime Helpline Desk (1930), victims are not able to get the necessary police assistance to report online crimes.

Due to lack of resources in the cyber crime control room, victims have to make an average of 15 attempts to lodge a complaint. Cyber police could attend only one in four calls between August and October this year. The helpline is currently manned by 22 personnel, who work in two shifts. Data records show that a typical complaint takes about 20 minutes to be filed.

70%-80% success rate during golden hours

If a fraud is reported within the first two hours – the ‘golden hour’ – the helpline has a success rate of 70%-80%. Additionally, the success rate drops to 15%-20%, according to officials.

Now Mumbai Police has been given approval for additional manpower of 22 personnel and computer terminal.

The crime branch, which oversees the helpline desk, has recently made several proposals to the home department to strengthen the desk with additional manpower and resources to deal with the rising cyber crime cases in the city. “A proposal to increase manpower to take cyber crime calls with computer terminals, dedicated telephones with printers and broadband lines was given to the state government,” an IPS officer said.

According to police officials, recently due to a technical glitch the Mumbai desk received calls from Navi Mumbai, Thane, Virar and other MMR areas. Mumbai Police attended 2,900 of the 8,486 calls received on the helpline in September, which came from outside the city.