THE DARK WEB

All Pattathil Dhanya Menon, India’s first woman cybercrime investigator, wanted to do was to dance. She took up the profession on the insistence of her grandfather. She shares her journey with Shraddha Kamdar

- Shraddha Kamdar

From the time she can remember, she wanted to be a dancer. That’s the reason she studied for tests to score well, a precondition her parents set for her to be able to dance. Along the way, she realised she can’t sustain herself financially with dancing alone, thus, she studied computer science and secured a job in the IT sector to become financially independent. All this so she could continue dancing. That she happened to become India’s first cybercrime investigator, is all due to her grandfather’s push, who was a well-known Supreme Court advocate. Today, she handles investigations and stage with equal finesse. Among others things, she has been a faculty at the Asian School of Cyber Law, Pune, has conducted training programmes for corporates, police and other State and Central government departments, and law enforcement agencies, and has been trying to create awareness of the topic among young children by running programmes at the school level.

That’s Patatthil Dhanya Menon, who apart from being passionate about spreading knowledge on cybercrime, is an expert exponent of not one, but two diverse dance forms— Mohiniattam and Kuchipudi. Over to the expert, a recipient of the First Women Achievers Award by Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Why did you decide to pursue cybercrime investigation?