Casting the Net Wide

TWO MAHARASHTRA POLICE OFFICERS CRACK BIG CYBER OFFENCE CASES AT A TIME WHEN THE FORCE IS ON THE DEFENSIVE

- KIRAN D. TARE

Like most states in India, Maharashtra and capital Mumbai have been plagued by a surge in cybercrimes in the recent past. In 2021, 2,883 cases of cybercrimes were registered in the state; only 16 per cent were solved. Most of the cases involved people being duped of their money online but what has officials worried is the increasing instances of hate crimes and online harassment. At a time when the Maharashtra and Mumbai police are embroiled in a series of unsavoury situations of its own making, this has only added to its problems. The silver lining is that a few officers have stepped up to retrieve the situation for the force.

For Dr Rashmi Karandikar, the new year began with a complaint about a mobile application, ‘Bulli Bai’, which was apparently holding a so-called ‘virtual auction’ of around 100 Muslim women. It was a Sunday, normally a holiday, when Karandikar, deputy commissioner of police (cyber security), started tracking the perpetrators. It was a daunting task, for Bulli Bai was uploaded on a code hosting platform, GitHub, located in the US and out of bounds for domestic investigation agencies. While screening Twitter, Karandikar found a handle, @BulliBai, which boasted that they were the creators of the app. It was an opening but it gave away little as the handle had only five followers, all heavily masked and all of whom had started deleting their tweets following the public uproar. Tracing their social media footprint and zeroing in on the perpetrators would prove to be quite a challenge.