Telangana reported 5,025 cases of cyber fraud in 2020. This number grew to 10,303 cases in 2021. Hyderabad, the state capital, reported 4,412 out of this 10,303.
The total loss to the public was over 600 crores from June 2021 to June 2023. That is almost 1.5 crores a day.
The silver lining is that at 17%, Telangana tops the FIR rate. This means that out of 100 reports filed on the cyber portal, 17 might be converted to a FIR and investigated.
From January 1, 2020, to May 15, 2023, as many as nine Indian states reported over one lakh (1,00,000) complaints of cyber-crime.
Gujarat was one of them. In spite of over 1,59,000 complaints, the FIR rate (the no. of complaints that are filed as First Information Report or FIR) was 0.8%. The national average of India is not much better. It is at 1.9%.
In plainspeak, this means that less than 2% of all cybercrime reports are converted into actual police cases (FIRs).
From January 2019 to January 2023, Karnataka lost more than 722 crores to cybercrime alone. The growth rate is impressive too. 363 crores out of these 722 crores was stolen in 2022 alone. This makes it almost 1 crore per day.
The recovery rate was an impressive 12%.
The number of cybercrime cases in Karnataka was 8132 in 2021 and 12,551 in 2022. This is a growth of 54% within one year.
Delhi received 2,16,739 complaints from January 2022 to May 2023. The FIR rate was 1.2%.
Maharashtra received 1,95,409 reports on the cybercrime portal, but only 0.8% of these were converted to a FIR.
Meghalaya has a FIR conversion rate of 8% for the same period.
Putting things in perspective
Let’s understand this easily.
Suppose 100 events are reported on the cyber crime portal. Only 2 of them will be converted to a First Information Report (FIR). Of these only 0.66 cases will have a chargesheet.
The Chargesheet is the next step after a FIR.
What kind of cybercrimes are most prevalent?
This chart is based on NCRB data.
Would you like to guess the type of cybercrime that is MOST prevalent?
Financial fraud in general, and credit card, banking fraud in particular – are the most prevalent types of cyber-crime.
Sources
This report is based on the following sources:
A. NCRB’s Crime in India Report 2021
B. RTI response sought by activist Jeetendra Ghadge, a Mumbai-based activitist.
C. Responses given by ministers in the legislative assemblies of the respective states and remarks made by police officials at public events.