New Delhi: Cyber crimes have shown a staggering 31 percent increase in 2023, with 86,420 cases registered in the year, compared to 65,983 cases in 2022, according to the latest report from the National Crime Records Bureau.
The crime rate, which measures the number of crimes per lakh population, increased from 4.8 in 2022 to 6.2 in 2023, it said.
Defrauding gullible victims was a primary motive of the cyber criminals, with 68.9 percent of them driven by the desire to scam their victims in 59,526 such cases, followed by sexual exploitation in 4,199 cases and extortion in 3,326 being the motive for the crimes, it said.
Anger and personal revenge drove criminals to commit 2,228 cyber crimes in 2023 while political motives were behind 205 cases, it said.
According to the crime rate, Telangana, with 18,236 cases and a crime rate of 47, topped the concerning data, followed by Karnataka, where 21,889 instances of cybercrime were registered, with a rate of 32.3. The charge sheet rate in Telangana was at 20.9, while for Karnataka it was 18.1.
Uttar Pradesh followed with number of cases at 10,794 but the crime rate was significantly lower at 4.6, owing to its large population.
Telangana also reported 98 cases of spreading fake news on social media, which is almost half of the total of 209 cases reported from across all states and Union Territories, according to the NCRB data. Mizoram, with 31 cases and Puducherry, with 147 cases, saw a charge sheet rate of 100 percent in cyber crimes.
Cyber criminals were involved in 2168 cases of circulating sexually explicit material and 1472 cases where such material pertained to children. it said.
The states and union territories also reported 1305 cases of cyberbullying and stalking of women and children, 689 cases of cyber blackmailing and threatening.
In metropolitan cities with a population of two million or more, a total of 33,955 cybercrime cases were registered in 2023, representing a 39.0 percent increase over 2022 when 24,420 cases were recorded.
