India plans to launch a dedicated cybercrime centre to crack down on online scams, which are estimated to have cost victims nearly 200 million euros in the first four months of this year alone.
The Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre, billed by national media as a "game-changer", will will act within minutes of a crime being committed, officials have promised.
The new body, expected to be launched within 100 days of India's new government taking office, will also seek to block the flow of stolen funds to scammers.
It will gather officials alongside social media and software experts to tackle cybercrime in India, where 740,000 complaints were filed between January and April for losses totalling 17.6 billion rupees, or 191 million euros.
Most of the victims had fallen prey to online trading and investment frauds, gaming apps, password manipulations, fake lending portals and extortion.
Cybercrime wave
May alone saw 7,000 cases daily. Meanwhile annual complaints rose from 26,049 in 2019 to almost a million in 2022.
A 708 percent jump in banking frauds in the past two years involving hundreds of millions of euros has also alarmed law enforcers, who say 45 percent of the attacks originate from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.
Earlier this month, police reported an online heist of 18 million euros from a Delhi branch of state-backed Nainital Bank and said cyber criminals breached its vault by taking control of the bank manager's username and password.
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The stolen money was deposited in 89 separate banking accounts, a police spokesperson said.
It came after an office worker in Hyderabad, the southern city where thousands of Indian software experts work for Google, Microsoft and Amazon, was cheated of 1,170 euros by scammers posing as police who threatened her with arrest.
And in June, Sri Lankan police arrested 200 suspects accused of defrauding victims and banking the proceeds in Britain, the United Arab Emirates and India. Sixty of them were Indians while the remaining suspects were from China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal.
Scam hotline
India ranked 10th in the world for cybercrime in a recent global index published in the PLoS One journal.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embarked on his third term last month, has promised to protect India's 820 million internet users.
Victims can already directly report scams via a four-digit telephone helpline and website.
Delhi said that between July 2023 and May this year it had taken down 325,000 illegal bank accounts, blocked 3,000 URLs and 595 mobile phone apps, and deactivated 530,000 SIM cards as part of its latest crackdown.
