Cybercrime Costs India Rs 31,000 Crore: Parliamentary Panel Tells Central Govt To Act Fast
The panel highlighted the importance of a user-friendly grievance redressal system, and it is important to act on all forms of cybercrime immediately.
Published : September 13, 2025 at 4:38 PM IST
By Gautam Debroy
New Delhi: The Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs has vehemently criticised the central government for its failure in tackling cybercrime despite the fact that several steps have been initiated to fight against the menace. The panel, in its latest report, has found that while victims may report to helplines such as 1930 or portals like cybercrime.gov.in, follow-ups are often delayed due to inter-jurisdictional challenges or a lack of real-time investigation frameworks.
“As a result, citizens feel that justice in cybercrime cases is slow and uncertain. The online grievance mechanism is often slow and difficult to access. Women and youth, key drivers of digital uptake, are especially impacted by safety concerns,” the Committee on Home Affairs, chaired by Rajya Sabha MP Radha Mohad Das Agrawal, has highlighted in its latest report.
School-going children have become targets of inappropriate content and fake educational resources, leading to parental reluctance to engage with online learning solutions. Similarly, higher education institutions have been victims of ransomware attacks. Parents are increasingly hesitant to allow online learning or app-based schooling. Universities and public research institutes have faced ransomware and data breach attacks. Weak cyber hygiene and under-resourced IT infrastructure make institutions easy targets, the committee said.
“Instances of fake websites impersonating government portals, as well as manipulated images on social media platforms, can damage perceptions of digital safety. In particular, the harassment of women through deepfakes increases cyber trauma and privacy anxiety, and hence, it damages trust in social media and public communication,” the committee said.
Financial consequences for individuals and organisations
Cybercrime in India has evolved into a threat with serious financial consequences for individuals and organisations, as highlighted by various ministries and organisations. At the national level, the scale of financial losses is immense.
In fact, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also informed the Committee that the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), since its inception on August 30, 2019, to November 28, 2024, received an aggregate of over 53.93 lakh complaints; these reported incidents collectively account for a defrauded amount of around Rs 31,594 crore. Cyber financial crimes form the largest component of the crime reported, accounting for about 85 per cent of the cases reported on NCRP.
“There is a growing pattern of cybercrime being used for funding organised criminal networks, fake job rackets and even human trafficking operations overseas. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) highlighted that Indian citizens have been trafficked abroad and coerced into committing cybercrimes from foreign-controlled “scam factories”, especially in Southeast Asia. This includes fake loan apps, call centre-based extortion rackets and even human trafficking using cryptocurrency payments,” the committee highlighted in its report.
The MHA highlighted that the ransomware has emerged as one of the most debilitating forms of cybercrime, with attackers encrypting sensitive data and demanding exorbitant ransoms for its release from organisations and individuals both. The cross-border nature of these attacks complicates law enforcement efforts, highlighting the need for robust international cooperation and legal frameworks. Similarly, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which overwhelm online services with malicious traffic, continue to target businesses, government services and critical infrastructure, causing significant operational disruptions.
Psychological trauma and victim shaming
“Victims of cyberstalking, identity theft, sextortion, and deepfake obscene content often suffer anxiety, depression, and trauma. Individuals are targeted through social media platforms using morphed or AI-generated explicit materials, frequently leading to self-blame, social withdrawal, and limited access to psychological support services,” the report said.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has also highlighted that artificial intelligence and machine learning are expected to shape the future of cyber threats, with technologies like deepfakes posing serious risks to public trust and democratic institutions.
Youth involvement in illegal digital activities
It was revealed to the Committee by MHA that unemployed youngsters, both men and women, are recruited by international cybercrime gangs for illegal activities such as managing mule accounts or sharing pirated content.
The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has informed the Committee that fake job scams exploit unemployed youth by offering fraudulent employment opportunities in exchange for registration fees or personal data.
“Call centres and crypto frauds operate through illegal call centres that dupe people into investing in fake crypto schemes or fake refund scams, causing massive financial losses. When caught, youth suffer reputational damage and are psychologically impacted by legal action and social isolation,” the committee noted.
Emergent transnational threats
The increasing use of cryptocurrencies to facilitate anonymous financial flows, the expansion of dark web marketplaces and the commercialisation of cybercrime services (cybercrime-as-a-service or CaaS) have intensified both the national and international scope of digital criminality. Southeast Asia, in particular, has emerged as a hotspot for new illicit service ecosystems offering phishing kits, ransomware variants, deepfake technologies and even “Money Laundering-as-a-Service” to transnational criminal networks.
Talking to ETV Bharat, a senior official from the law enforcement agencies said that criminals based in different states across the country operate under a chain system involved in all forms of cybercrime.
“However, it’s very important to act on all forms of cybercrime within the golden hour, that is, within one hour of an incident that takes place,” said Rajeen N Mishra, joint commissioner of police (law and order), Gautam Budh Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, to ETV Bharat.
According to Mishra, from January to date this year, as many as 300 FIRs have been registered in Gautam Budh Nagar in connection with all forms of cybercrime.
As per data, following investigation into 130 cases of cybercrime since January 2023 up to August 25, 2025, registered across different police stations in Gautam Budh Nagar, as many as 227 accused have been arrested from different states, including West Bengal, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
The cybercrime police were successful in freezing more than Rs 106 crore and recovering more than Rs 55 crore in Gauta Budh Nagar.
The legal framework needs to be further strengthened.
The National Cybercrime Reporting Portal serves as the primary national platform for reporting cybercrime incidents, enabling citizens to register complaints through two key channels, including the online portal accessible at www.cybercrime.gov.in and the National Cybercrime Helpline, reachable via the toll-free number 1930.
The Committee observes that, currently, the existing law does not differentiate between synthetically generated and user-created content. Considering the increasing misuse of deepfakes and AI tools for generating harmful or misleading content, the Committee recommends that the legal framework be further strengthened to include express provisions in the legislation for handling content generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and similar emerging technologies.
The Committee further recommends that to address issues of deepfake or obscene content being uploaded on social media, MeitY should consider developing an innovative technological framework mandating all photos, videos and similar content shared on digital platforms to have a watermark, as it would help to prove the origin of the content and make it more difficult to fake or edit/manipulate.
The Committee is of the view that to make this initiative functional, MeitY should set up uniform technical standards for media provenance, while CERT-In would act as the coordinator for monitoring and issuing detection alerts.
User-friendly grievance redressal system required
The Committee is of the view that the grievance redressal system should be made more user-friendly and transparent to enhance public trust and ensure effective resolution of complaints. The Committee, therefore, recommends establishing a uniform format for filing complaints, setting clearly defined timelines for acknowledgement and resolution, and ensuring public disclosure of grievance statistics, including the number of complaints received, resolved and pending.
The Committee further recommends that integrating the grievance redressal mechanism system with emerging data protection frameworks would help to create a more holistic regulatory environment that addresses concerns related to privacy, content moderation and cybersecurity in a cohesive and coordinated manner.
Read More
