A proposal to lodge cyber crime complaints at all police stations in Pune has been made. Originally, Pune had a single center in Shivajinagar for cybercrime complaints.
The registration of cybercrime complaints at all local police stations in Pune has been put forward by the cyber crime cell. This has been done to ease the process of lodging a complaint and make it accessible.
The current situation complaints:
Presently, all problems regarding cyber crimes have to be made at a special cyber crime police station in Shivajinagar. This leads to lesser grievances being addressed and increases the number of perpetrators still on the loose.
The cyber crime police station at Shivajinagar is currently the only resource and contact available to register cyber crime and e-fraud-related grievances. Cybercrime FIRs have not been made despite it being a recent addition to Pune. This is due to the inconvenience of Pune residents having to travel all the way to Shivajinagar. Officials state that this inconvenience has further discouraged people to file any sort of cybercrime problems.
What is the new proposal for registering accusation?
As per the new directives that have been proposed, a cybercrime investigation and prevention cell will be set up at every police station. Here, approximately five police staff will be allocated under the management of a crime police officer. They will exclusively handle cybercrime complaints.
This decision has been made to reduce the difficulty of the people who have no choice but to either travel or let go of their complaints. The cyber crime police station has been active in Pune since 2018.
Now, in light of all the issues, Pune Commissioner Amitabh Gupta has taken the first step to decenter the system of filing FIRs. He suggests an FIR should now be lodged at any police station. However, this step will only be implemented after a discussion with stakeholders.
The current cyber police station in charge D.S. Hake stated that the measures of this decentralization are in place and will be carried out as per the commissioner’s directives. He further mentioned that the proposal to this effect has been readied for implementation.
This step to ease the process of registering cyber offenses is a vital one. With the rapid digitization of the country, people rely wholly on digital services to conduct even basic tasks. The ability for anyone and everyone to freely lodge a complaint against cybercrime increases cyber security and cyber awareness which is the need of the hour.
