Cyber crimes are rising in the country and every 20 seconds, one crime is being committed. Many of the crimes are being committed via YouTube, email, mobile phones or websites. Most of the victims of the crimes are between the age bracket of 19-35 while 53 per cent are women. Relevant departments say that due to lack of transparent idea, shame and fear almost seventy per cent people do not take legal help.
Every day, hundreds of complaints are submitted to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, BTRC, ICT department’s cyber help division and the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre, NTMC.
Most of the cases are dismissed as they have flaws. As per BTRC’s information, the number of Internet users has surpassed 90 million this year and, of them, 70 percent face some sort of threat.
Of the users, 20 percent are involved in some form of cyber-crime.
Only ten per cent of users are aware of cyber-crimes. There are 30 million Facebook users in the country and 75 per cent crimes are centred around Facebook.
About half of those harassed on the Internet are students of schools and colleges. Dhaka city police receives more than 20 thousand applications with more than 6 thousand in the Hello City application.
The ICT help desk gets more than ten thousand complaints though most want prevention without lodging a GD.
More than one and a half thousand people have been arrested in and outside Dhaka over cyber-crimes.
The common crime faced by many young girls is the threat to publicise a private photo unless money is paid.
Sometimes, girls who send photos via Facebook to other friends find that their images have been hacked and then doctored.
A girl named Rasha became a victim of blackmail and sought help from the cyber unit of the Counter Terrorism and Trans-national, CTTC.
The blackmailer was trapped and arrested by the police and then Rasha found that her Facebook was not hacked and the perpetrator was none other than her boyfriend.
In the end, Rasha did not lodge a case and the friend was allowed to go free with a written statement.
Many women become victims of harassment after a relationship breaks down. Nazma had sent some photos to her boyfriend, Kamal, with whom the relation did not last.
Later, Kamal used the photos to torment Nazma and demanded money. At one point, he took Tk 70,000. However, the mental torture continued and Nazma went to the police.
After a GD was filed, Kamal was arrested. The boy’s family returned the money though Nazma was not willing to lodge a case. Again, the girl was happy to take a written statement on the grounds that if the matter came out in the public, her image would suffer.
Deputy-commissioner of CTTC, Alimuzzaman says: “To bring the ones involved in tech based crimes under law, the police must be informed.”