Chennai: With the Tamil Nadu police stepping up its policing in cyber space, the number of persons arrested under the IT Act and IPC for cyber crime has gone up by 194 per cent even as the country in total registered a 59.4 per cent increase in the umber of arrests, according to statistics provided by the Union communications and information technology ministry.
In Tamil Nadu, in 2013, 97 persons were arrested for various cyber crimes as against 33 arrests in 2012, recording a 193.9 per cent increase. All over the country the number of people arrested went up from 2071 in the year 2012 to 3301 in the year 2013.
The number of cases registered in Tamil Nadu also went up from 41 to 90, showing an increase of 119.5 per cent. While throughout the country the number of cases registered went up from 3477 in 2012 to 5693 in 2013, registering an increase of 63.7 per cent. However, a cyber cell official in Chennai city noted that they received more complaints of harassment on social media. “But once we trace the suspects, in a majority of cases, the complainants prefer to withdraw their complaints as they usually know the suspects,” the officer said.
According to the Union ministry, major crimes reported nationally include loss or damage to the computer and obscene publication or transmission in electronic form, cyber forgery and cyber frauds. The government has taken a series of technical, administrative and legal steps to address cyber crime. Cyber crime cells have been set up in all states and union territories and forensic training and investigation labs too in some states where more than 26,000 police officers and 600 judicial officers have been trained.
Cyber labs were also set up in collaboration with the Data Security Council of India (DSCI) and NASSCOM in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata for awareness creation and training programmes on cyber crime investigation.
