Pace, prowess do not match city cops' goals on cyber security

Every year, when the new Police Commissioner takes charge, they claim to the citizens of Delhi to ramp up their efforts to tackle crimes against women and children. Another token comment is reserved for cyber security as like always they promise to focus on cyber policing and usher in the era of smart policing.

However, in reality, these are mere cosmetic changes in the official rhetoric as the Delhi Police are miles behind upgrading their cyber security cops. In their annual report, they had claimed that they would establish cyber teams in every police station and dedicate a cyber cell in each district.

But this has been in the talks for the past one year and cyber security experts who are working with the Delhi

Police in this issue, have claimed that the way Delhi Police are focusing on cyber crime, it will take a decade to realise the targets.

"We have been talking for the past one year about these targets. It sounds easy but deciding the training course, the officers who will undertake training, the necessary infrastructure that needs to be set up is not as easy as it sounds," said a highly placed source who routinely advises the Delhi Police on cyber crime.

"In Preet Vihar police station, two head constables manage the cyber team. If this is the way the police focuses on cyber crime, then it will easily take ten years to achieve the targets," the source added.

The reason for the pessimism is the fact that the Delhi Police's incompetence in cyber crime will leave any one shell shocked.

Recently, a batch of 30 police personnel from the Sub Inspector level ranks at a training institute were being trained on the basics of cyber crime and the trainer

found that not only were the police personnel, who were very young, were unable to grasp the basics of the training but they were even unable to conduct site verifications, something that a ten-year-old with a desktop can manage.

"I have been teaching them for 35 days and every topic has been taught and revised at least three times. They are yet unable to grasp the basics of the course, may be they are unable to get past the jargons.

When they have to open a site and sign up for some service, they are supposed to then verify that they had indeed accessed the site, by verifying through their emails. They stare blankly at the screen and ask me for the next step of instruction. They all have Android phones and they don't even know what android is," claimed the course instructor.

The fact that the young recruits are unable to even understand basic concepts like domain and sub domains and work on a server, makes them ill-fitted for the job.

The Cyber Cell has claimed that they have trained a total of 621 police officials till date. The online complaints and Economic and Cyber offences have shot up to 2,343 complaints in 2016.