Increasing pendency of cyber crime cases, claims govt report

 More and more cyber crime cases are piling up on investigators resulting in an increasing pendency of such investigations, according to the latest government report.

While there were 8,032 cyber cases pending at the end of 2014, the number increased by 47%, touching 11,789 in December 2015.

 The report “Crime in India 2015” released on Tuesday showed that investigators had handled 19,423 cases in 2015, which included the pending cases from the previous year. It could clear only 7,634 cases last year, which is only 39.30% of the total cases it had investigated in 2015.

In July, DH had reported that cyber crimes had witnessed an alarming 20.5% rise with Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka topping the list. There were 11,592 cyber crimes reported in 2015 compared to 9,622 the previous year. In 2013, 5,693 cases had been registered. According to the report prepared by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), charge sheets were filed in courts in 3,206 cases. The rate of chargesheeting was 46.8%, while 60.7% cases were pending.

 Greed and financial gain were cited as the main reason behind cyber crime in as many as 3,855 cases. The motive behind other 1,110 cases was fraud and illegal gain.

 In around 1,200 cases, women were the victims — 606 cases related to using cyber instruments to insult the modesty of women, like posting defamatory pictures and writings and 588 related to sexual exploitation. There were 205 cases in which the motive was to incite hate crimes against communities, while there were 293 cases of blackmailing.

 Of the 8,121 people arrested, including four foreigners, 415 were “sexual freaks”, while 1,195 were neighbours, relatives or friends and 1,594 business competitors of the victims.