People’s fear and mistrust in authority leads to cybercrime, say experts at report launch on policing

Lack of digital exposure isn’t the only factor that may lead someone to fall prey to cybercrimes; a significant number of cyber crime victims are those who perceive digital means of payment to be safer than other modes. This came to light in the Status of Policing in India Report 2026: Cybercrime—Victim Perspectives and Systemic Responses, published by Lokniti-CSDS and Common Cause on Thursday (September 24, 2026).

The report, building onto its earlier reports documenting public trust and experience with police, examines the modus operandi of cybercriminals, the lived experience of victims, the digital habits and vulnerabilities of ordinary citizens, and the preparedness of the police and banks to handle complaints.

The report launch invited multiple experts as speakers who highlighted various issues the report identifies. Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama and a digital rights activist, shared how his experiment with AI scanning voters’ data released by ECI resulted in creation of a ‘relationship graph’. “I asked AI to scan the publically available voters’ data. It could tell there are 20 voters in India with the same name as mine, 12 in my own state, who my parents and relatives were, where I lived, who were my neighbours and give it to me in the form of ‘relationship graphs’ of each person, like nodes of a wider network,” he said. He said that publically available data is not only falling into the hands of cyber criminals but also helping the State in building a surveillance structure, with private data of even children being recorded.

The report is based on a survey across 16 Indian states with 8,306 respondents, one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions with 37 cyber crime experts, victims, and family members of those accused.

Another speaker, Sanjay Sahay, retired IPS officer and cyber security expert, said that the fear of authority and major distrust with public governance leads people to fall prey to crimes like digital arrest, “people are more afraid of what authority can do rather than what they can deliver,” he said.

Radhika Jha, lead researcher of the SPIR series, said that cybercrime perpetrators rely heavily on ‘social engineering’ which involves winning trust of the potential victims through deception and manipulation. “In some cases, they even use coercion and threats to gain access to sensitive information or personal devices. The crime networks are highly organised,  running both financial and non-financial crimes, trading leaked data, mule accounts and fake SIM cards as ready-made kits,” she said.

The report highlighted lack of any mechanism for accountability of banks in cybercrimes. About three out of four victims (72%) could not recover any of their lost money. Only one in ten victims could recover the whole amount. The report also mentioned that the victims are less likely to believe that police are well-equipped to deal with cases of cybercrimes. As opposed 31% of non-victims, only 23% of the victims of financial cybercrimes believe that police is well equipped to deal with cybercrimes.

Dr. Ranjana Kumari, Director, Centre for Social Research reiterated the challenges women and rural victims face, of accessing the police, getting the FIR registered and bribes being demanded by the police. “We have to encourage digital awareness from childhood. Educated women should also come forward to report these crimes. We also have to force banks, institutions and big digital companies to take responsibility for these crimes,” she said.