Fake Cyber Police
By Pulkit Sharma

Cyber law expert Na.Vijayashankar, also known as Naavi in Cyberspace, is one of the most respected names in the Indian tech world.  As Chairman of the Digital Society Foundation and as a Director of Cyber Law College, one of Naavi’s life mottos is “Let’s build a responsible Cyber society”.   Naavi’s views are highly regarded and he is regularly quoted by the leading Indian newspapers and magazines.

Naavi actively campaigns against all forms of cyber crime.  In his latest investigation, Naavi has uncovered a group of persons in Hyderabad posing as Police Officers conducting sting operations to trap persons indulging in sexual conversations in Chat Rooms on the internet.  In one such incident, Mr. Chandra from the Police Cyber Department threatened a software employee that he would be punished for indulging in such sexual conversations.  The con artist, posing as Cyber Police Officer, even had the audacity to ask their victim to meet a Police Officer by the name of Veena Devi from the Hayathnagar Police Station.

The whole aim of this exercise was to blackmail/threaten the software professional to part with a large sum of money.

Naavi’s investigations showed that there was no such Police Officer with the name of Veena Devi in the Police Cyber Cell in Hyderabad.  However, Naavi is open to the idea that a handful of junior officials in the police department have colluded with the cyber criminals to shake down unsuspecting victims whose only crime was to indulge in overtly adult conversations.

Techgoss note:  Techgoss has seen the emails allegedly written by the Andhra Pradesh Police Cyber Cell to the software employee.  This certainly looks like a case of cyber criminals masquerading as cyber police to shake down a techie who said the wrong things in a heated chat room.