Cyber Forensics Capabilities Of Pune Cyber Crime Cell

By
V K Singh

Is Indian police tech savvy? This is a crucial question as law enforcement needs to be technically sound to solve cyber crimes. The cyber law of India is a very weak piece of legislation giving rise to many cyber crimes. This makes the task of law enforcement tedious as solving a cyber crime is not an easy task. To put further pressure upon the law enforcement are those cases that does not fall into the category of cyber crimes but are otherwise related to tracing a missing person or offender.

Of late, Indian police is becoming more and more successful in tracing the missing persons or absconding criminals. However, is Indian police, especially the Pune cyber crime cell, exaggerating their cyber forensics skills? Or is it the misleading and ignorant reporting by media that gives a totally misleading picture of them?

As per a recent news, the Pune cyber crime cell officials solved a case of missing girls. While this is a good work worth complementing them yet how they solved the case using cyber forensics is still a mystery? As per the report the cyber crime cell officials analysed the data on hard disks of computers the missing girls used at their home and on the basis of the SMS they sent to their mother, the police traced their location in Punjab.

This is absurd behaviour on the part of Pune cyber crime cell. Why did they analyse the hard disks at all when they can trace the missing persons from their mobile location? Tracing a person form his/her mobile location is not only instantaneous but also more effective that engaging in the exercise of hard disk analysis.

It seems the Pune cyber crime cell is just trying to bring home the point that they know cyber forensics. The truth is that they do not know the basic of cyber forensics otherwise they would not have gone for this redundant exercise of hard disk analysis (if at all they have done so).

It also seems that ultimately the officials used triangulation method to trace the absconding girls. This is the right process that was used but why the drama of cyber forensics skill and cyber forensics lab?