Hotlines meant for cyber crimes not going through in Bengaluru

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The IT hub of India faces a strange kind of predicament. Despite increasing cybercrimes in Bengaluru, almost all the hotlines meant for reporting them are either switched off or just keep ringing. Incidentally, according to the Bengaluru City Police website, India's first Cyber Crime Police Station was started in CID, Bengaluru way back in 2001. Then in 2017, according to the information provided in its website, to tackle the growing number of cybercrimes, another cybercrime police station came up in the premises of the Police Commissioner's office in Bengaluru.

Eventually, the city got eight such police stations nine, if we include the Bengaluru Rural as well to register and investigate cases related to not only cybercrimes, but also economic and narcotic offences. They are called CEN (Cybercrimes, Economic and Narcotics Offences) Police Stations. All these police stations, in theory, can be accessed round the clock via their hotline. But when PTI called at different times, over a period of three days, except for South CEN police station, which is in the premises of Banashankari Police Station, and Whitefield CEN police station, located in Whitefield police station premises, none of the hotlines went through. Social activist Dushyant Dubey, who has been highlighting the civic issues plaguing the city through his NGO St Brofus' Army, flagged the issue on his X page St Brofus, last week.

"It came to our notice when a victim was asked to call the CEN Police Station, East Division, by the Cybercrime Department. The provided number did not work. So, we started digging," Dave said to PTI. When he realised that it was not a one-off issue, Dave said he dug out the list of phone numbers that are available to the public to report a crime, sent as reply to his RTI request (HMBUH/R/2024/60754) to the Police Commissioner's office on October 18, and started calling CEN hotlines randomly.

"We have been calling on and off. We even made a video of calling the CEN Police Station, East Division, which triggered this entire exercise, to show that these numbers exist only on paper," said Dave. Dave posted the video on X account with the accompanying message: "I don't understand how a police officer can simply switch off the hotline phone at 3.51 pm on a working day when citizens need them the most."