To enable the investigating officers to properly probe online crimes against children, the Odisha police in collaboration with Unicef started a three-day training programme in Bhubaneswar on Monday.
At least 34 police officers from different police stations in the state have attended the first-phase training session while 38 police officers would undergo the training from August 10 to 12.
“As cybercrime is increasing rapidly, there is a need to equip our officers with knowledge and skills in investigation of such cases. An increasing trend of online abuse against children and women has been noticed and this calls for specialized training and utilization of different kinds of tools and techniques to handle such cyber offences,” director general of police Sunil Kumar Bansal said, while addressing the participants.
ADG (crime branch) Arun Bothra said this training programme will lay stress on the evolving nature of cybercrimes against children, technical skills, digital forensics, legal issues, collaboration and information sharing with other agencies, victim support and empathy.
According to the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), cybercrimes against children were reported in large numbers during the Covid pandemic in Odisha in 2020 and 2021.
While not a single cybercrime against children was reported in the state in 2017, only seven and five such cases were registered in 2018 and 2019.
Going by the NCRB data, Odisha witnessed 71 cyber crimes against children in 2020 and 48 cases in 2021.
“We noticed that about 99% of the cybercrimes against children in Odisha involved cyber pornography or hosting/publishing obscene sexual materials depicting children. We have not come across the trend of phishing scams, financial frauds, cyber blackmailing, creation of fake profiles, cyber stalking or bullying and crimes through online games in Odisha against children in the state so far,” another police officer said.
Cyber experts said parents and teachers play a major role in preventing such crimes.
“We found that children could easily fall prey to cybercrimes. They get tempted to cyber space and social media sites. Scammers often use fake identities to chat with children and get personal information and photos/videos from them. Later, they misuse the photos,” cyber safety expert Binayak Sahoo said.