As cybercrimes in BPOs make headlines, computer forensic experts say Indian investigating agencies need to be a step ahead of the criminals in putting together sophisticated tools to discover evidence."Billions of rupees are stolen each year by criminals with credit card crimes topping the list as the digital revolution in India brings to fore new frauds," says Samir Datt, director of computer forensics and investigations with the Pune-based software firm Visionindia."Computer forensics is an emerging field that could help victims of computer crimes discover evidence. It has wide applications in investigation and analysis techniques to acquire potential legal evidence," says Datt whose firm helps the police force of many states in busting cybercrimes and employs software used by the FBI as well as police departments of countries like the US and Germany.Alongside credit card crimes, the number of cases of insurance and medical fraud, money laundering, espionage and intelligence gathering were also on the rise, he said."There has been a dramatic increase in the number of cases where women are harassed on e-mail by jilted lovers or maniacs", Datt says. "We have handled a case where a few employees of a Pune-based offshore processing unit stole the PIN numbers of US Citibank clients and tried to steal money but were caught. We also nabbed a youngster who had sent misleading e-mails to the police about a girl who had spurned him. The evidence matters the most and it needs to be precise," he adds.M L Sharma, government examiner of questioned documents at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in the city, says the number of people forging signatures or computer documents has grown phenomenally in recent times. "We receive loads of forged and manipulated documents from investigating agencies across the country. The volumes have been increasing every year", he says.Gourav Dutt, DIG of West Bengal's police academy, says the police is ill-equipped to handle cybercrimes as technology had made things a lot simpler for criminals to avoid the sleuths."Today, a pizza reaches you faster than the police! In an era ofautomation, investigators need to have a strong base of computer forensics to be able to get leads on any case faster than the criminals can wipe it off," he says.Datt says investigators could use advanced software that protects computer systems, discovers and recovers all files through forensic bitsream imaging of hard disc drives as well as tape drive memory sticks."E-mail investigations and recovery of hidden files as well as temporary files is possible through expertise available with such software", he points out."The fundamental rules of computer forensics are never to mishandle the evidence or work on original evidence. Moreover, the investigators must never trust the questioned operating system and must document all findings", he says.Sleuths and investigators must be equipped to analyse file systems forensically, collect on-site evidence, seize digital evidence and be able to analyse it, Datt addded. (PTI)
