My wife was cheated by an online merchant. She was made to transfer money to a fraud account. By the time she realized that she was getting cheated, she had already transferred about Rs 12,000. Once she realized, we decided to file a Cyber Crime complaint.
To check the process, she spoke to a friend who was in the Police department. He directed her to go to a specific office in the city and file a complaint. Once the complaint is recorded and validated, she can approach the bank to further actions (we didn't know what the further action was).
Since it was already late in the evening, we decided to first file the online complaint. The next day an officer from the Cyber Crime department (that the friend referred to) contacted my wife and asked her to visit the office. Her identity and the fraudulent transactions were verified. She was given an acknowledgement of the complaint.
She approached the bank with this complaint. In this case, no security was compromised and so it didn't need freezing of her account. The bank probably notified the target bank of the fraudulent transactions.
The police officer called and updated that the fraudsters were located. He also asked her to visit the office. On visiting the office, she was advised of the next steps of filing a petition with the local court with all the details. The court will then issue an order for the police to return the money from the fraudsters.
This step was just about giving a progress update and informing the victims about the process. For a cybercrime case, the victim should not need to visit the office. It could have been communicated over the phone or email.
We approached a lawyer and filed a petition with the local court. Again, this could have been part of an online process. This does not need so much paper work and running around for xerox copies. This process may be already computerized and the lawyer's office might want to have a paper trail record of it.
The court gives an appointment date to hear the case. Note that it is a date and not date and time. That is, you have to go there in the morning and be ready to spend the entire day waiting for your case. Since the case deals with a fraud, it gets listed along with the other criminal cases. Here is an opportunity to socialize with over-worked cops, other victims and possibly some criminals too.
Since our case does not demand any serious inquiry, the lawyer spoke to the court clerks and moved it to the next step. For the court to issue an order , the victim - referred here as petitioner needs to introduce a guarantor (just in case if the petitioner himself/herself was a fraud, the guarantor is supposed to give surety for the amount). This takes another two hours to prepare the paperwork. The good part here is everything is based on Aadhaar and the bad part is, it does not effectively use Aadhaar. The surety document with the guarantor's photo, address and details is scanned and uploaded to the court web-site.
Considering the simplicity of the case and the value therein, This could have been an Aadhaar authenticated - online self declaration by the guarantor.
I noticed the juniors in the lawyer's office treat signatures as mere tokens and not as a serious authentication step. They asked me to send my signature over Whatsapp. Had they known my signature, they may have even signed for me! A sign of the namesake process.
Then the judge approves issuing of an order. Again, this is a namesake process. The judge simply looks at the petitioner and the guarantor and approves.
After a couple of working days, the order will be ready. Someone from the lawyer's office will have to go to the court and collect the order. The order must be given to the Cyber Crime team for them to recover the money. This takes a few days for them to complete the formalities with the banks. Once the money is recovered and is deposited to the victim's account, the victim has to notify the Cyber Crime department to close the case.
The Police Department has separated the cases for cyber crime for a different kind of process. But the legal system has not altered its processes for the different kinds of crime.
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