The Karnataka High Court asked the state government on Wednesday to facilitate the integration of cybercrime complaints received on the 1930 national cybercrime helpline with the functioning of a Cyber Command Centre created exclusively to tackle the state’s ever-growing burden of cybercrime cases.
A single-judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna said the Cyber Command Centre (CCC) created within the Karnataka police force under the leadership of a director-general of police cannot function in isolation from cases reported on the 1930 cyber crime helpline.
“It is imperative that 1930 helpline be integrated with the Police IT application that is subsisting and all this to be a part of the CCC,” Justice Nagaprasanna noted in the course of an order in a case involving the alleged theft of software codes by an employee of a private firm involved in building drones.
The high court has been attempting to streamline cybercrime investigations, especially in Bengaluru and Karnataka at large, by working with an amicus curiae— Additional Public Prosecutor B N Jagadeesh—to understand the issues involved in dealing with cybercrimes that have broken crime records in Karnataka with fewer solutions and convictions.
“Yet another aspect that is glaring is that the complaints of cyber crimes are reported to the 1930 helpline. The helpline 1930, presently the hub against fraud, must be integrated within the framework of the CCC,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.
The high court said the present system of receiving complaints on the cyber helpline involves coordinating with bank officials to stop the outflow of funds from the accounts of fraudsters.
“All this happens without a document, as no crime is registered. Therefore, it is necessary for the helpline 1930 and the conversation therein to be recorded as a part of the police/information technology system and, if necessary, draw up a zero FIR against each of them,” the court observed.
‘Only CEN police stations should handle cybercrime’
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The high court also called for all cybercrime cases in the state to be handled by the 43 CEN police stations that will come under the purview of the CCC and not to leave cybercrime cases with other police stations, which are overburdened with traditional policing work.
“The jurisdictional police stations are sometimes ill-equipped to investigate cybercrimes. Therefore, the CCC is envisaged. It is necessary that there should be integration of the system of jurisdictional police stations and the CCC for every offence i.e., a cybercrime, to be brought under the umbrella of the Command Centre,” the court stated.
“If all of what is aforesaid is not complied, in today’s world, where crimes are faceless, investigations would become baseless,” the high court said. The officers posted to the Cyber Command Centre “must not be frequently moved out”, it added.
The number of cybercrimes reported in the state under the Information Technology Act was only 8,396 in 2021 but has grown to 30,000 in 2025, the high court pointed out.
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“The graph has climbed steeply, a chilling reminder of the exponential growth of cybercrime. Thus, the CCC is not an option, but an imperative born of necessity,” it said.
The bench welcomed a September 2 order of the Karnataka Government for superintendents of police to act as link officers to supervise cybercrime police stations and “report to the DG, Cyber Command, only for the functions related to cybercrime police stations”.
The government order says that cases under the IT Act, as well as those related to Aadhaar and cases of fraud and cheating exceeding Rs 50 lakh, must be mandatorily registered in cybercrime police stations. It further says that “the cybercrime laboratory located in the CID premises has been transferred to the Cyber Command Centre”.
Cyber Command Centre not yet functional
Though the Government issued an order on April 9 for the constitution of a Cyber Command Centre within the police force to exclusively tackle the burden of growing cybercrime cases in the state, including in Bengaluru, the unit is yet to become functional.
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The Cyber Command Centre was initially created to function under the control of the DGP for cybercrime and narcotics within the Criminal Investigation Department, who would report directly to the home department, instead of the state police chief. The proposed reporting hierarchy had created consternation in the police.
Cybercrimes had surpassed crimes such as dacoity, robbery, and other types of thefts in terms of their incidence in Karnataka, with 52,000 cases reported last year. This is the highest for the states of South India, the Government stated while ordering the creation of the Cyber Command Centre.