Delhi High Court seeks Centre, RBI, Delhi Police response on PIL to control 'new age cybercrimes'

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Central government, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Delhi Police on a plea to take steps to prevent 'new age cybercrimes' where scamsters are forging court documents and posing as government officials to defraud people [Akshya and Anr v. Union of India and Ors]..A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora ordered the respondents to file their replies within two weeks.The matter will be heard next on March 19. .The public interest litigation (PIL) petition highlighted that scamsters today were forging court orders, summons and arrest warrants to dupe people.The PIL was filed by Advocates Akshya and Urvashi Bhatia, who were themselves victims of cyber-crimes in which people posed as officers of the police, Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to try and extort money from them.It was stated that the petitioners' cases were not unique and that it was now a common practice where fraudsters call people, send them text messages showing forged FIRs, orders and other documents and ask for money in return for relief..The PIL sought directions to the authorities to frame guidelines for better co-ordination between the agencies for swifter investigation to stop the transfer of the proceeds of these 'new-age cybercrimes" and to simplify the procedure of making complaints. A direction has also been sought to the government to run awareness campaigns about these scams. .In the previous hearing, the High Court had asked the Central government to consider having a unified system where an individual can verify whether he or she is being investigated by federal agencies like CBI, ED Income Tax Department (IT Department) or Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI).The Bench had also suggested that the Delhi Police must have a unified system where people who have been victims of online fraud could lodge complaints even through WhatsApp, SMS, or e-mail.“You [Delhi Police] must have a centre where people can lodge complaints through WhatsApp, SMS or e-mail and on that basis the complaint gets registered. You have done it for missing children. A child goes missing and if a person filed a complaint through WhatsApp, the complaint is registered. You can do something like this in cases of these frauds also,” the Court had said.