Operation Sentinel: Proof that India needs a unified cyber strike force now

What INTERPOL achieved in Africa was transforming scattered partnerships into operational backbones. For a nation confronting everything from deepfake sextortion to large-scale mule-account networks, that structured cooperation has become indispensable rather than optional.

- BRIJESH SINGH

When 574 suspected cyber criminals are apprehended across 19 nations in a single coordinated sweep, the global policing community takes noticeprecisely what unfolded during INTERPOL's Operation Sentinel, a month-long offensive against cybercrime networks traversing Africa, spanning from October 27 to November 27 this year.

For Indian readers immersed in policing, intelligence and internal security, this operation transcends mere continental statistics; it embodies a template, a warning and an opportunity interwoven into one tapestry of digital defence.

Operation Sentinel manifested with uncommon clarity of focus. Rather than confronting "cybercrime" as an amorphous all-encompassing threat, INTERPOL and its African counterparts homed in on three offence categories now painfully familiar to Indian investigators: business email compromise (BEC), digital extortion (encompassing sextortion) and ransomware. These identical classifications emerge from the 2025 Africa Cyber Threat Assessment as the continent's most rapidly proliferating and damaging cyber threats, with two-thirds of African member nations reporting cyber offences constituting medium-to-high proportions of all documented crime. The parallels resonating through India's own crime charts demand recognition.