That India is witnessing a digital revolution cannot be doubted. But the digital revolution is not only about benefits: it has a dark side — the boom in cybercrimes — that must be exposed, analysed and thwarted. Figures suggest that this year, between the months of January and April, Indian citizens lost sums exceeding Rs 1,750 crore due to cybercrimes. Over 740,000 complaints were lodged on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal — this is managed by the Union home ministry — concerning these transgressions. Estimates by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre suggest that Indians are losing substantial amounts of money to a diverse set of cyber-criminal activities that include digital frauds, trading scams, cheating in investment and even scams pertaining to dubious dating sites. Data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau have revealed similar spikes in these offences in recent years. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has recently spoken on a particular form of cybercrime — ‘digital arrest’ — in his radio address.

Several reasons can be attributed to the exponential increase in such offences. The digitisation of public services is progressing at an explosive pace but people’s awareness of the perils of the process remains sketchy at best. This is not to
suggest that only the poor and the marginalised segments of Indian society are at risk of cybercrime given their lack of knowledge. A careful scrutiny of the profiles of the victims of cyber fraud would reveal that they cover a wide social spectrum, with the elderly at particular risk. This points to another important facet of cyber-criminal activities in this country: they are extremely sophisticated endeavours that can fool even the educated. What is revealing is that these wrongdoings continue to evolve even as law-enforcement agencies try their best to get even with them. These days, public awareness campaigns on such criminality are not rare. The media, too, has responded when it comes to highlighting the different strategies adopted by the criminals. Yet, the phenomenon persists. Perhaps one factor that can explain its perverse rate of success is that on most occasions, the mischief has a psychological underpinning — it banks on fear — that unfailingly forces its victims to fall into the well-laid-out trap. Policy must keep this dimension in mind while framing deterrents.