‘Report cyber crime cases to helpline 1930 within an hour to increase chances of recovering your money’

They should dial 1930 — a helpline to recover money lost to online financial crime.

The victim must have all details related to the cyber crime like the bank account details, UPI link where the money was transferred so the account could be frozen.

The helpline was started by the Mumbai Police on May 17 this year and till date, we have attended more than 11,000 calls.

Of these, 1,900 calls were for financial frauds and we managed to freeze an amount of more than Rs 40 lakh which the victims will get back. But the victim needs to call us within an hour (of the crime being committed) or as early as possible.

Do you think the helpline team needs to be expanded and its services made available round-the-clock?

Presently, 1930 helpline number functions from 10 am to 6 pm. But we are trying to make it round-the-clock so that if cybercrime happens late at night or in the wee hours, we will be able to stop the fraudulent transactions. We are working on increasing the manpower and hopefully, we will expand the team.

Many fake mobile numbers of wine shops, eateries, courier services, helpline numbers of banks etc. are uploaded on Google by cyber fraudsters and people end up calling on them and losing money. Are the cyber police doing anything to prevent such crimes?

We call it “edit fraud”. We are in touch with different search engines. We search for such fraudulent numbers and report them to search engines and to CERT-In on a daily basis. Even search engines are taking down these numbers on our request as well as by themselves.

I would advise the people to not assume that the numbers they find on search engines are genuine. They must visit a genuine website for the numbers.

Senior citizens often fall prey to cyber crime. How do you reach out to them to prevent such cases?

Not just senior citizens, even youngsters fall prey to cyber crime. We are doing an awareness campaign through Mumbai Police social media platforms, radio channels, media houses where we are trying to make people understand, “Jo Dikhta hai woh hota nahi hain (What you see may not be true)”.

We are making reels with the hashtag: #ThodasaSochle (Think before you act).

Further, we are organising 15 to 20 minutes of street plays to educate people on cybercrime in a humorous way.

We are working with Rotary clubs and Indian Merchants Chambers (IMC) ladies’ wing for awareness.

We are approaching schools and colleges to hold awareness campaigns. We are planning competitions with students. We are approaching senior citizen clubs too.

Tell us about the preventive measures banks, social media platforms and brands must immediately undertake to prevent cyber crime?

First, there must be vigilance. All banks and other brands must check all these search engines to find out if their names and numbers are being used by fraudsters and they should report it to the search engine, which must take them down.

Secondly, the banks and all intermediaries like matrimonial sites, search engines, brands etc. should keep the customers aware through multiple mediums including social media.

As cyber crimes are taking over conventional crimes, do you think the city police must also have 12 zonal cyber crime units?

Right now, we have five regional cyber crime police stations which will deal with cases involving amount worth over Rs 10 lakh. Every police station has a cyber cell and our plan is to strengthen the five regional cyber crime police stations. We will also strengthen cyber units at police station level.

What are the major problems you face as DCP of the cyber police in Mumbai?

In the two years of (coronavirus-induced) lockdown, cyber crime has shot up.

Even though five regional cyber crime centres have come up in Mumbai, cybercrimes too have seen a significant rise and thus, we have limited resources to face them. So, increasing manpower will be top priority. Presently, we have expertise as well as good and dedicated police officers.

It has been learnt that a new building dedicated only to cyber police will come up in Bandra. When will that happen and how will it help?

By next year, it (the building) will be handed over to Mumbai Police. Presently, we are working on plans to make best use of the building.It will have training facilities, a dedicated cyber lab which will have state-of-the-art tools, software and equipment.

All the local police stations will get all kinds of technical help from this building.