Keeping India Safe Online

Interview: Addl. Commissioner of Police Mr Deven Bharti

Is an IP address is the only fool-proof way to trace a cyber criminal?
Not really! There are number of other ways to trace cyber criminals. But disclosing any of this information would be highly risky for future cyber crime investigations.

IPv6, which will allow a nearly unlimited number of IP addresses, could make it even more complicated to trace a criminal. Is the CCIC ready?
Yes. We are ready for any new technology that will be implemented in the future. If we don’t have people with the expertise, we hire them immediately! And we hire the best in the industry! We also use reverse engineering, where we report the way in which a crime was committed and then come up with a solution for that for future reference.

Can you tell us about the qualifications of the police officers employed at the CCIC station and the training given to them?
We look at their resumes to confirm their computer literacy and any similar expertise in the IT field. A few officers are chosen from every department in every zone of the city for this post. Our officers are trained on a regular basis. As the technology advances in the industry, we need to update ourselves too.

Experts are called from around the world to train us. Also, there are a number of IT companies that help us, for instance Nasscom has a dedicated team to help train our officers. We have a cyber lab in an undisclosed location where our officers are regularly trained. In certain cases where a new type of Internet criminal activity involving unknown technology is tracked, the information is sent to the respective departments for updates on the technology. In this way we keep sharing information with the IT companies who train us.

What if a crime is committed from foreign soil? How should one go about getting justice and how much time would it involve?
The time taken depends on the location of the source of the crime. Sometimes one might feel that the IP address originated from a foreign land, but the accused might be using a proxy and is stationed in the same location or close by in our country itself. So the first step is taken where the victim registers a complaint and then the investigation begins. Some traces are completed within 24 hours and some take longer. If the crime is actually committed from outside the country against someone here, then we take help of Interpol to bring the culprit to book.