[ISN] India should have exhaustive cyber laws to deal with cyber crimes

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http://www.gujaratglobal.com/nextSub.php?id=2186

Gujarat Global News Network
Ahmedabad 
2007-01-09

Inadequate laws and lack of awareness among people and police are the 
two biggest factors for the growing menace of cyber crime in India. The 
scale of problem is not known just because victims of cyber crime do not 
come forward. This is how leading cyber law expert of the country Pavan 
Duggal sums up the twilight zone of cyber laws in the country.

Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate has a repository of number of cases of 
cyber crimes in India to prove his point that the new type of crime has 
come to stay in India and is flourishing. This is just because of lack 
of Laws and awareness among people, he says. Cyber terrorism a great 
challenge to Indian police in the coming days, according to him.

In the last 11 years only two persons have been convicted for cyber 
crimes in India. Even after amendments made in the IT Act 2000 in 
December last the Act is obsolete. Initially the Act had only six types 
of offences in its purview. There is an urgent need for an exhaustive 
and all comprehensive IT Act to deal with the fast growing problem of 
cyber crime.

Duggal was in Anand city for the launch of Asia's first cyber law clinic 
which will be run by the students of SEMCOM, an institution of Charutar 
Vidya Mandal. The clinic will be run with the active participation of 
Duggal. Appreciating the initiative of SEMCOM, Duggal said there was 
great need for forum where victims of cyber crimes can raise their voice 
and they have access to information.

Duggal strongly feels that there is great need for the capacity building 
in this sphere. Today police is not willing to register cyber cases and 
in majority of cases it was not equipped to deal with such offences. 
Even the judicial system is to be sensitized to this new dimension of 
the law, he says.

He agrees that cyber laws should be part of legal education as a special 
subject. He listed financial frauds, identity theft, phishing and data 
theft as major areas of cyber crime while describing cyber terrorism as 
the biggest threat looming large in cyberspace. Police should not only 
have knowledge of laws, but also tools to effectively deal with cyber 
crime.

He said that another practical problem of evolving effective cyber laws 
is the fact that while technology was growing at a great pace, the law 
making process was at the old snail pace. Giving an example he said that 
the IT Act came into force in 2000, it took full six years for 
amendments to the Act. And the situation is such that nature of the 
problem has grown many fold during this period and the Act with the 
amendment is as obsolete as the Act of 2000!

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