As per information available, the UT's Cyber Cell division, since its inception in 2008, has managed to secure only two convictions in all the cyber crime cases that it has registered so far.
The cyber crime graph has seen a steady upward march in Chandigarh and the sparse number of convictions, out of the hundreds of such cases registered in the last many years, seems to have emboldened the criminals.
As per information available, the UT’s Cyber Cell division, since its inception in 2008, has managed to secure only two convictions in all the cyber crime cases that it has registered so far.
Sources said many cyber cheating cases are in the stage of being quashed as the complainants have managed to reach a compromise with the accused.
Out of the two convictions, one was a case pertaining to the black dollar scam in which a Nigerian national was arrested way back in 2008, the very year when UT’s Cyber Crime Investigation Cell was established at the Crime Branch, Sector 11. The second case pertians to a sexual assault in which a man was arrested and convicted under charges of rape as well as under sections of Information Technology (IT) Act in 2017.
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The accused in the case was handed a life imprisonment sentence by a court.
The black dollar scam, in which a Nigerian national was convicted, was investigated by then cyber cell personnel sub-inspector Hardit Singh and sub-inspector Gurmukh Singh. Both the policemen are now DSPs. The convicted foreign national was later deported to his native country from Amritsar.
An officer of the cyber crime wing said, “The ratio of registration of FIRs of cybercrimes out of the total complaints received has been very low for a long time. The registration of cases has increased in the last six-seven months. In a maximum number of cases, Section 420 (cheating) of IPC is applied along with the IT Act.
Section 420 of IPC is a compoundable offense, in which a compromise between the two parties is allowed. In most cybercrime cases, suspects prefer to return the amount that they swindled to complainants, and strike a compromise before the case can be taken to its logical legal end. Though things have started changing now, as the courts have started taking a strict view of the nature of cyber crime.”
DSP (cybercrime) Rashmi Yadav Sharma agreed that the low conviction rate in cases of cyber crime was a matter of concern.
“The low conviction rate in cases of cyber crimes — including those of cheating, stalking, data theft — is a matter of great concern. But this problem is the same throughout the country. This is the reason that many states have called for the setting up of exclusive, special and independent cyber courts within their jurisdiction. Even many states/UTs have been demanding the formation of special cyber cell police stations, which will be capable of lodging FIRs independently. The issue of low conviction was among many that were discussed during the recently concluded Joint Cybercrime Coordination Team (JCCT) Group-5 meeting in UT,” DSP (cyber crime) Rashmi Yadav Sharma, said.
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