Cyber criminals cheated several people of about Rs 2 crore in the state last year when the Police registered 2,037 such cases. It was a marginal increase (5.5%) from 2020 when 1931 cybercrimes were recorded.
In the bulk of the cases, unidentified cyber crooks took away from the victims by offering them high returns through different schemes, on purchases of pharmaceutical products, during online trading, installation of mobile towers and while sending gift parcels from abroad. In some cases, people lost money from their accounts after clicking on malicious links sent by the scammers to their phones and emails.
Not only is the rise in cybercrimes a cause of concern in this increasingly digital age, but also slow investigation and poor conviction, which have raised questions on the efficacy of cops in solving such cases. Going by theNational Crime Records Bureau, not a single case has resulted in conviction in the state between 2018 and 2020.