Parliament panel pitches plan to hunt down cyber cons

A lot at stake

- SATISH KUMAR/MINT

With financial frauds on a drastic surge, the Centre is on the lookout for a way to track, trace and blacklist perpetrators behind digital arrests.

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down the path that cyber criminals follow to distribute money in fragments across hundreds of accounts.” the official added.

Digital arrests have emerged as a menace for users across the internet. Overall, money lost to online financial frauds nearly tripled last year to ₹21,181 crore, according to the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal. Of this, only ₹2,530 crore—about 12% of the total amount—was frozen or recovered.

Overall, NCRP received more than 2 million complaints related to online financial frauds last year.

‘The parliamentary panel, in its report tabled in Parliament on 20 August, advised “integration of digital identification checks, like Aadhaar-based e-KYC (know your customer) to ensure every person initiating a deposit is authentic, thereby limiting anonymity that criminals exploit”. Mint has seen a copy of the panel’s recommendations.