With no laboratory equipped to provide forensic evidence for cyber crimes in the State, the Odisha Police has proposed establishment of a Cyber Forensic Division at the State Forensic Science Laboratory (SFSL) here.
The Government has already extended in-principle sanction for the proposal and the division is expected to be set up during current financial year. The State Police currently depends on Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata for securing evidence related to cyber crimes but in view of huge pendency, the cases get piled up.
“We need to procure specific software and hardware for the cyber forensic division at SFSL here. Now, that the Government has given us in-principle approval, work would be intensified,” Addition al Director General of Police, Crime Branch, BK Sharma said during a Specialised Training Course on Cyber Crime Investigation and Forensics at Cuttack on Saturday.
DGP Sanjiv Marik inaugurated the function and urged districts to register more cyber offences. For the course, the Crime Branch had invited 60 police officers – two from each district – to give hands-on training on seizure and collection of digital evidence, forensic imaging, packaging of digital evidence and questionnaire for examination.
Besides collection of evidence, a special asession on investigation of social media related offences, online financial frauds as well as frauds involving instruments such as ATM and credit cards was also conducted. Cyber laws and basics on Websites and computer applications were also part of the training.
Sharma said, the idea behind the initiative was to equip every district with cyber crime investigation expertise since such offences are no more confined to urban areas because of penetration of connectivity and access to mobile applications in rural areas of the State.
Since general police stations refuse to register cyber crimes on the pretext of absence of expertise, the CB is now attempting to strengthen their capacity so that more cases are reported and investigated.
In the first quarter of this year, 50 cyber offences were registered in the State which means about 200 cases are reported in a year. If the cases registered with Cyber Crime Cell of CB are included, only about 400 to 500 cases are registered in the State on an annual basis. The actual number of cases could be more because more than half the districts do not register any case at all.
While states like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have cyber police stations in each district, Odisha has to a lot of catching-up to do. Apart from the cell under CB, it just has one dedicated police station at Cuttack.
The one proposed at Bhubaneswar at a cost of `1.5 crore is hanging fire for over a year over land issues. Three more cyber crime police stations at Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela have now been proposed.
Prasanta Patnaik