Digital fraud, paper police

Reporter’s Diary

Recently, I was a victim of what in cyber parlance is called ‘identity theft’. A fraudster had cloned my account on Facebook, complete with the profile picture, and had sent friend requests to some of my contacts. Soon, a few of them received requests from this fake account for transfer of money to a particular mobile number as “I need the amount urgently to pay the hospital bills of a friend.”

Though I was not defrauded of any cash as Facebook acted almost immediately and deactivated the duplicate account, as a conscientious citizen, I decided to bring the incident to the notice of the police since there is every chance of other gullible people falling prey. And therein lies a story.

In cybercrimes, time is of the essence as culprits frequently change numbers and perform the vanishing act before the police can even figure out who they should be after. It was a Friday night, and I immediately tweeted to Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant, with a request to track down the phone number mentioned. A few minutes later, I received a reply from the twitter handle of Bengaluru City Police asking me to file a written complaint at the nearest cybercrime police station for them to initiate action.

Considering how cyber criminals operate, the police should have taken my tip-off seriously and identified the fraudster immediately, but no, they would not act until I went to the nearest station and filed a written complaint!

A journalist friend of mine drew the attention of a very senior IPS officer in the CID, which deals with cybercrime, who too suggested that I should first file a formal complaint and then meet him on Monday -- that is, two days later -- and he would “extend all help”. To be fair, the officer reverted on Monday to ask why I had not turned up. I saw no point as the very purpose of alerting the police was defeated due to the loss of time.

Meanwhile, I did try registering a complaint on the cybercrime website of Bengaluru Police, but could not do so due to a glitch. I then followed it up with an e-mail, for which I am yet to receive a reply. It is not that the police department lacks talent, but their lackadaisical attitude and refusal to adapt to changing times will only ensure that cyber criminals have a free run.

This is not my first such experience with the police. Some years ago, when my mobile phone was snatched from me on the road, the local inspector did his best to dissuade me from filing an FIR. When I persisted, and then continued to follow up on my complaint, a senior officer offered to replace my phone, which cost about Rs 1 lakh, with a new one. Obviously, I refused, but this business of replacing stolen goods to avoid registering a complaint, in order to keep the crime statistics low, is not new.

About two decades ago, one of my teachers in Mysuru found that her car stereo had been stolen along with that from a dozen other cars on the same lane. When the group of victims visited the police station, the inspector took them to a room, pointed to a heap of stereos that had been recovered earlier from other thieves and asked them to choose whatever set they wanted and return home without filing a complaint.

To cut a long story short, the Facebook fraudster whom the police failed to apprehend might have conned several others by now, and with all the technology available, neither my stolen phone nor the culprits have been tracked even after over three years. So much for the Bengaluru Police being the guardians of the tech capital of India.