The government has recently said in Rajya Sabha that 1,600 arrests have been made related to cyber crimes under the Information Technology Act of 2000.Interestingly, while the number of arrests has been 1,600 and cases registered 3682, the conviction rate is a shocking seven, of which only three are significant.
The interesting aspect of these numbers is that the number of cyber crimes has gone up 10 fold in the past couple of years and legal experts would say that the reason for this is the low rate of conviction.
The data available with the National Crime Records Bureau reads thus: In the year 2007, the arrests made were 154 while in the following year it was 178. In the years 2009 and 2010 the number of persons arrested were 288 and 799 and in 2011 it was 1,184. This is clearly a huge rise in the number of arrests.
The NCRB records also show that 217,288, 420,966 and 1,791 cyber crime cases were registered under IT Act, 2000 during the years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
While on one hand, it could be argued that the cyber police have become more pro active while on the other it could be said that the number of instances have gone up due to a weak law and also the fact that the number of convictions are at a miserable low.
As per the records maintained by the various cyber crime police stations in India, here are the crimes committed on the internet for which these people have been arrested: Source code attacks, hacking, obscenity, breach of confidentiality or privacy, mischief, criminal trespass, data theft, cheating, criminal intimidation and defamation.
During the various arguments that have been conducted in courts, advocates have found that the police find it extremely difficult to defend their case.
It has always been a case of low risk and high payback. Very often they are not able to substantiate their trail, says, B P Venkatesh, an advocate from Bangalore who has argued several cases on these lines. Moreover the conviction rate is pathetic and is in single digits.
An official with the cyber crime police station says that the low rate of convictions defeats the purpose. Most of the police stations are not technically up to the mark and hence the collection of evidence is extremely difficult.
To add to this there is late detection and the lack of proper support. If police personnel from law and order are transferred into cyber crime police stations, they hardly are of any help as they lack the expertise and hence the need for private players and ethical hackers becomes very important. India at least needs five lakh ethical hackers to prevent the rise in cyber crime.
Venkatesh further argues that the government needs to focus on these aspects. However they are busy by issuing gag orders on the Internet which hardly serves the purpose.
Pavan Duggal, cyber crime expert and a senior advocate, points out that the convictions are in single digits. This is despite having the IT Act since the past 12 years.
Most of the times we are not able to reach convictions because of the inability to come up with credible and legally valid electronic evidence. Most of the time electronic evidence is not captured in the right manner nor is it retained and preserved in the manner required by the Indian Evidence Act.
Electronic crimes can be convicted only on electronic evidence and the lack of the same leads to low convictions. By and large the mindset of the police is to rely on the Indian Penal Code and not on the provision of the IT Act. Hence the people's confidence in the efficacy of cyber crimes and punishments defined under IT
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