New Delhi: Fraud and sexual exploitation are the prime motives for cyber crime in the country, the National Crime Records Bureau report on 2017 crime statistics has found.
According to the report, there were 21,796 cyber crimes in the country in 2017, of which 12,213 were cyber fraud. This was followed by sexual exploitation, of which there were 1,460 cases; 206 cyber crimes were also committed with the motive of ‘inciting hate against the country’.
Apart from these, the other motives for cyber crimes included ‘causing disrepute’ (1,002), ‘extortion’ (906), ‘anger’ (714), and ‘personal revenge’ (628). There were also 110 cases of cyber crime that were attributed to “terrorist activities”, with Assam (44) accounting for the most number of cases in this category.
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Cases double over two years
The number of cases of cyber crimes also nearly doubled over a period of two years, from 11,592 in 2015 to 21,796 in 2017. Uttar Pradesh accounted for the highest number of cyber crimes in 2017, with 4,971 reports, followed by Maharashtra with 3,604 counts of cyber crime and Karnataka with 3,174 cases.
Among metropolitan cities, Bangalore led the way with 2,743 cases, doubling from 1,042 cases in 2015.
In Uttar Pradesh, fraud was the major motive for such crimes.
The most number of sexually-motivated cyber crimes were committed in Maharashtra, with 462 of the 1,460 such cases being registered in the state, followed by Assam with 217 cases. Of the 462 sexual exploitation cyber crime cases in Maharashtra, Mumbai accounted for 204 of them.
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More detailed statistics
The report acknowledged that data was now being collected in detail for various crimes. “Data is now being collected in greater detail for several categories of crimes. For example, under Cyber Crimes against Women & Children, NCRB is collecting crime statistics under crime heads such as Cyber Blackmailing/Threatening, Cyber Pornography, Cyber Stalking, Defamation/Morphing, Fake Profile, Internet Crimes through Online Games, etc.”
According to the data, there were 542 cases of cyber stalking/bullying women and children in 2017, 172 cases of fake news, 1,543 cases of ATM frauds and 3,724 cases of identity theft.
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