New Delhi, February 10 The centers of cyber crimes have shifted from Jamtara, Mewat, and Bharatpur to Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar, CBI Director Praveen Sood said on Tuesday.
In his welcome address at the National Conference on "Combating Cyber-Enabled Frauds and Dismantling the Ecosystem," organized by the CBI and the Home Ministry's anti-cyber crime unit I4C, he said that regardless of the location of cyber criminals, they cannot commit the crime without a SIM card and a bank account.
Although the state police will be the first responder in case of cybercrimes, CBI and I4C will remain focused on dismantling the core infrastructure and system of such gangs, Sood said.
He said that the agency has achieved a 90 per cent conviction rate in cybercrimes in the last 10 years and has filed chargesheets in 82 per cent of such cases registered by it.
In 2025, CBI coordinated with international agencies such as the FBI of the USA, and agencies of Britain, Japan, and others to expose big gangs of cybercriminals," the CBI director said.
The CBI has been investigating cybercrime since 2000 and has upgraded its capabilities by establishing the Cybercrime Investigation Division in 2022, a government statement said.
The CBI serves as the nodal agency for investigating cybercrime affecting the Central government and its offices, handling both cyber-dependent crimes and cyber-enabled frauds.
"The primary objectives of the conference is to build a shared understanding of the scale, trends, and evolving nature of cyber-enabled fraud in India; examine the three critical pillars of the cyber-fraud ecosystem -- the financial pillar (mule accounts and money laundering), the telecom pillar (misuse of SIM/eSIM and digital infrastructure), and the human pillar (cyber slavery and trafficking into scam compounds)," the statement said.
Strengthening inter-agency and public-private collaboration among law enforcement agencies, banks, telecom providers, regulators, and technology platforms; exploring the use of artificial intelligence and data analytics to scale investigations with limited manpower; improving mechanisms for faster fraud reporting, real-time fund tracing, timely evidence preservation, and better victim protection will also be focus areas during the conference.
