Chennai: While technology has brought people close in terms of networking and connecting, it is a bane when it comes to fraudulent activities. In the last months, there has been alleged increase in money swindling incidences.
Recently, the Anti-Bank Fraud Wing of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) nabbed an auditor for allegedly deceiving of Rs 32 lakh after hacking an NRI’s account in Dubai. However, bank frauds are not a one-off incident.
Sindhuja was one of the recent victims of the act. She was in for a surprise when she realised that Rs 12,000 had been debited from the account linked with her number after receiving a spam call.
Narrating the incident, Sindhuja, who works as a telecaller in a private company in the city, recalled, ”I got a call from a North Indian who kept muttering for about a minute or two and I could not make any sense. Soon after I disconnected, I received an alert on my mobile that Rs 12,000 has vanished from my account.”
”I immediately took the matter to the bank officials and received a temporary refund and was promised of a permanent one after a month,” she said.
Similar was the case for Prakash, but he was quick enough to realise that it was a fraudulent activity and disconnected the call within a few seconds and escaped from the cyber attack.
With the rise of cyber crimes in India, experts are worried about the lack of effective enforcement and minimal conviction rate. Researchers in the field advocate the usage of a basic handset for the mobile number linked with the bank and avoid spam calls.
Speaking on the issue, Supreme Court of India Advocate and Cyber Laws Expert, N S Nappinai said, ”The IPC and IT Acts are more than enough to cover the banking frauds. However, the problem is not with the availability of laws or sufficiency of knowledge, the police and judiciary force for the last 20 years are being trained in the sector. It is an on-going process and capacity building is being undertaken extensively across the country. While this is a pedagogic process, the need of the hour is effective enforcement of the mandate. The conviction rate and the complaint registration percentage is abysmally low in cyber crime cases in India.”
Echoing similar thoughts, DG Vaishnav College Criminology department Assistant Professor, Michael Valan stated that the unreported cases of financial swindling are higher.
He pointed out the lack of separate classification of bank frauds in India. Giving an instance, he said, ”Forgery cases in money extortion and other situations fall under the same category which cannot provide solution to hoaxes.”
Elaborating on the usage of applications to commit such crimes, he said, ”Google is an open source and cannot have a hold on the number and types of apps introduced. There is also a dearth of experts in the police force. There is no centralised cyber crime policy.”
Explaining the need to nab offenders, Nappinai elaborated, ”Until the criminal is nabbed and jailed, he is not going to be deterred from committing an offence. The low registration rate indicates the lack of confidence in the system.”
”The pace at which such cyber crimes, including bank frauds, are dealt with, is slow than normal. We cannot rely only on electronic trails which work in the case of international-level.”
A police source stated that there is an increased level of awareness among general population about cyber crimes and added that the department receives more number of online harassment cases.
”Precautionary measures should be taken when people engage in doing online transactions,” added the source.
According to reports, it may also be noted that the State has received a fund of Rs 28.97 crore to build 40 cyber crime police stations and six cyber labs to handle the increasing number of offences.