Digital arrest fraud: Indians lost Rs 120 crore in January-April 2024
New Delhi: Indians lost a whopping Rs 120.3 crore to ‘digital arrest’ fraud schemes during the first quarter of 2024, according to recent government data. This alarming trend was highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), which oversees cybercrime at the national level through the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), noted that digital arrests have recently emerged as a common method of cyber fraud. Many perpetrators of these scams are located in three contiguous southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.
In its analysis of trends from January to April, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) found that 46 percent of cyber frauds reported during this period, resulting in cumulative losses of approximately Rs 1,776 crore, originated in these three countries.
As many as 7.4 lakh complaints were received between January 1 and April 30 this year, while 15.56 lakh complaints were received in 2023, according to the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) data as cited by Indian Express.
According to I4C, there are four types of scams — digital arrest, trading scam, investment scam (task based) and romance/dating scam. “We found that Indians lost Rs 120.30 crore in digital arrest, Rs 1,420.48 crore in trading scam, Rs 222.58 crore in investments scam, and Rs 13.23 crore in romance/dating scam,” Chief Executive Officer (I4C), Rajesh Kumar had said while releasing the January-April data in May, according to the publication.
I4C zeroed in on Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia after analysing data on its NCRP, inputs received from states and Union Territories, and some open-source information, IE added.
Kumar emphasised that cybercrime operations in these countries employ various deceptive tactics, such as using social media to recruit Indians by offering fraudulent employment opportunities.
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Karnataka govt gives nod to give internal reservation among SCs
Bengaluru, Oct 28: The Karnataka cabinet on Monday gave its consent for providing internal reservation among Scheduled Castes (SC) and decided to constitute a commission that will be tasked with collecting empirical data.
The commission will be constituted under a retired High Court judge, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister H K Patil told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.
"Regarding providing internal reservation among SC there were demands, discussions and thinking, in Karnataka. In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent verdict regarding internal reservation among SCs, the cabinet today gave its approval to provide internal reservation among SCs," Patil said.
"....after obtaining the data, it has been decided to decide on the next course of action. The government will ask the committee to submit the report in three months," he said.
Patil said the cabinet also decided to postpone all upcoming recruitments for at least three months until the commission submits its report.
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"From today if any recruitment is to be notified, that process will not take place, it will only start after the commission submits its report," he said.
Just ahead of the assembly polls, the previous BJP government's cabinet had taken a decision on internal reservation, by recommending to the central government a six per cent internal quota for SC (Left), 5.5 per cent for SC (Right), 4.5 per cent for "touchables" (Banjara, Bhovi, Korcha, Kuruma etc) and one per cent for others.
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on August 1 held that states are constitutionally empowered to make sub-classifications within the Scheduled Castes, which form a socially heterogeneous class, for granting reservation for the uplift of castes that are socially and educationally more backward.
A seven-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, by a majority of 6:1, set aside the apex court's five-judge bench verdict of 2004 in the EV Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra Pradesh case which had held that no sub-classification of Scheduled Castes (SCs) can be allowed as they are a homogeneous class in themselves.
