Odisha: Cyber Crimes Spiral Upwards In 2020

Bhubaneswar: With much of humanity locked behind closed doors for much of the year 2020 thereby increasing the dependence of people on cyberspace, the crimes pertaining to the virtual community also witnessed a sharp rise in the year.

In Odisha, cyber crime related incidents saw a spike of around 23.6 per cent between 2019 and 2020. Minister of State for Home Affairs Dibya Shankar Mishra informed the Assembly in this regard while replying to a question by BJD MLA Soumya Ranjan Patnaik.

Experts opine that the rise in cyber crimes during the Covid induced lockdown and shutdown could be attributed to more reliance on online payment and UPI transactions.

Similarly, making his statement to a question by MLA Bhawani Shankar Bhoi, Mishra informed that the State has witnessed a total of 2984 rapes, 1470 murders, five bank loots and 16 ATM robberies during 2020.