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In this era, where the technology leads to a new level and a better version and also easily available to every individual which can be accessed at any corner of the nation and the world itself, it also gives a lead to a number of cybercrimes rates per year with no such out way to deal with them yet. Eventually, there are laws dealing with them but their increasing number is still a need to be controlled anyway. Inspite of having laws and strict remedies against them, the prior need is to grab control over them and also to work with more privacy norms for an individual and society. Also, there is a need for much awareness among the citizens especially the youth and the women. In the previous years reported the highest number of cybercrimes, among them the maximum crimes are related to the women. It’s a very easy task for hackers and criminals these days to breach privacy and acquire the necessary information from their target and use it further in their own way. Women have to be extra careful regarding all these crimes as they are or can be the prior target for any individual or group practicing such illegal ways for their livelihood or for any other cause.
As said where there is a right, there is a remedy too. Each individual has given the privilege to practice their right and if violated then they are already provided up with the remedies to deal with it in the form of laws and policies. Cyber Crime against Women in India reveals loopholes in the present laws and policies of the Indian Judicial System and what can be done to ensure safety in cyberspace. There are laws dealing with it irrespective of the increase in the number of crimes.
What is Cyber Crime?
The term Cybercrime may be judicially interpreted by the courts in India, but however, the term Cyber Crimes is not defined in any act or statute passed by the Indian Legislature. Cyber Crime refers to that uncontrollable evil having its base in the misuse of growing dependence on computers in the modern world of science and technology. The oxford dictionary defines the term Cyber Crimes as a criminal activity carried out by means of computers or other internet sources. Cyber Crimes may be said to be those species of which genus is the conventional crime and where other either a computer is an object or subject of the conduct of constituting a crime.
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Professor T.S Vishwanathan has given three different aspects to the definition of Cyber Crimes in his book “The Indian Cyber laws with Cyber Glossary as follows:
- Any illegal activity in which a computer is a tool or object of the crime is to influence the function of a computer.
- Any incident associated with computer technology in which a victim suffered or could have suffered loss or damage to his or her reputation.
- Computer abuse is considered illegal, unethical or unauthorized behavior relating to the automatic processing and transmission of data.
Cybercrime is a global phenomenon. With the arrival of modern technology, cybercrime and victimization of women are on the high and it poses as a major threat to the security of a person as a whole. Even though India is one of the very few countries to enact the IT Act 2000 to combat cybercrimes, issues regarding women still remain untouched in this Act. The said Act has termed certain offenses as hacking, publishing of obscene materials in the net, tampering the data as punishable offenses. But the grave threat to the security of women, in general, is not covered fully by this Act.
Types of cybercrime that are committed against women.
Amongst the various cyber crimes committed against individuals and society at large the crimes which can be mentioned as especially targeting women are as follows:
- Harassment via e-mails.
- Cyber-stalking.
- Cyber pornography.
- Defamation.
- Morphing.
- Email spoofing.
- Harassment through e-mails is not a new concept. It is very similar to harassing through letters. Harassment includes blackmailing, threatening, bullying, and even cheating via email. E-harassments are similar to the letter harassment but create a problem quite often when posted from fake ids.
- Cyberstalking is one of the most talked-about net crimes in the modern world.
Cyberstalking involves following a person’s movements across the Internet by posting messages (sometimes threatening) on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms frequented by the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails, etc. Cyber Stalking usually occurs with women, who are stalked by men, or children who are stalked by adult predators or pedophiles. Typically, the cyber stalker’s victim is new on the web and inexperienced with the rules of netiquette & Internet safety. It is believed that Over 75% of the victims are female.Cyberstalkers target and harass their victims via websites, chat rooms, discussion forums, open publishing websites (e.g. blogs and Indy media) and email. The availability of free email and website space, as well as the anonymity provided by these chat rooms and forums, has contributed to the increase of cyberstalking as a form of harassment.
There are a couple of reported cases, which speak of the position of the cyberstalking in India. The recent being the case of Manish Kathuria who was recently arrested by the New Delhi Police. He was stalking an Indian lady, Ms.Ritu Kohli by illegally chatting on the Web site MIRC using her name. He used obscene and obnoxious language, and distributed her residence telephone number, inviting people to chat with her on the phone. As a result of which, Ritu kept getting obscene calls from everywhere, and people promptly talked dirty with her. In a state of shock, she called the Delhi police and reported the matter. For once, the police department did not waste time swinging into action, traced the culprit and slammed a case under Section 509 of the Indian Penal Code for outraging the modesty of Ritu Kohli.
Cyber pornography is the other threat to female netizens. This would include pornographic websites; pornographic magazines produced using computers (to publish and print the material) and the Internet (to download and transmit pornographic pictures, photos, writings, etc).
The Internet has provided a medium for the facilitation of crimes like pornography. Cyber porn as it is popularly called is widespread. Almost 50% of the web sites exhibit pornographic material on the Internet today. Pornographic materials can be reproduced more quickly and cheaply on new media like hard disks, floppy discs, and CD-Roms. The new technology is not merely an extension of the existing forms like text, photographs, and images. Apart from still pictures and images, full-motion video clips and complete movies are also available. Recent Indian incidents revolving around cyber pornography include the Air Force Balbharati School case. A student of the Air Force Balbharati School, Delhi, was teased by all his classmates for having a pockmarked face. Tired of the cruel jokes, he decided to get back at his tormentors. He scanned photographs of his classmates and teachers, morphed them with nude photographs and put them up on a website that he uploaded on to a free web hosting service.
It was only after the father of one of the class girls featured on the website objected and lodged a complaint with the police that any action was taken:
- Cyber defamation: Cyber tort including libel and defamation is another common crime against women in the net. This occurs when defamation takes place with the help of computers and / or the Internet. E.g. someone publishes defamatory matter about someone on a website or sends e-mails containing defamatory information to all of that person’s friends
- Morphing: Morphing is editing the original picture by an unauthorised user or fake identity. It was identified that female’s pictures are downloaded by fake users and again re-posted/uploaded on different websites by creating fake profiles after editing it. This amounts to a violation of the I.T. Act, 2000 and attracts sec. 43 & 66 of the said Act. The violator can also be booked under IPC also. The Times of India reported that in October, a Delhi-based beautician told the police that her photograph was flashed on a porno portal along with her mobile number.
- Email spoofing: A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, which misrepresents its origin. It shows its origin to be different from what actually it originates. A review in the CyberlawTimes.com shows that India has crossed the danger mark in cybercrime targeting women and children. Statistics show, and law enforcers confirm, that the maximum number of cybercrimes related to obscenity occurred in Mumbai last year.
Provisions of the IT Act 2000 relating to cybercrime and offenses against women in India and the loopholes of the said Act.
Unfortunately, even though Chapter XI of the IT Act deals with the offenses such as Tampering with computer source documents (S.65), Hacking with computer system (S.66), publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form (S.67) Access to protected system(S.70), Breach of confidentiality and privacy(S.72), Publication for fraudulent purpose(S.74) IT Act 2000 still needs to be modified. It does not mention any crime specifically against women and children.
The elementary problems, which are associated with Cyber-Crimes, are Jurisdiction, Loss of evidence, Lack of cyber army and Cyber savy judges who are the need of the day. Judiciary plays a vital role in shaping the enactment according to the order of the day. One such stage, which needs appreciation, is the P.I.L., which the KerelaHigh Court has accepted through an email. Today with the growing arms of cyberspace the territorial boundaries seem to vanish thus the concept of territorial jurisdiction as envisaged under S.16 of C.P.C. and S.2of the I.P.C. will have to give way to an alternative method of dispute resolution.
Again, under no section in IT ACT 2000, Obscenity – personal viewing – Is an offense, infact, like in IPC 292 again if it is proved that you have published or transmitted or caused to be published in the electronic form only then under Section 67 it can be an offense. Last but not least, the IT Act 2000 does not mention the typical cyber crimes like cyberstalking, morphing and email spoofing as offenses.
Conclusion
From the last three decades computer technologies has entirely become an essential component of human life. The increasing dependence of human beings on these technologies has created unparalleled incidents of crime and misuse. It is a fact that most forms of cyber crimes have misused the technology to the next level which was never made for that. Cyber technologies provide a plethora of opportunities to cyber criminals to cause harm and exploit innocent people who are still unaware of the usage of such technologies. Indian women are still the greater victims of the cyber crimes as still, they are not open to immediately report the cyber abuse or cybercrime.
The growth of cybercrime in India as well on the whole world is on the rise. Various forms of cybercrimes are experienced by Indian women who uses the internet in a purposeful context. Neither the provision of Information Technology nor the provision of the Indian Penal Code fully reflects the ground realities of women’s suffering through cyber crimes. In many situations of the cyber crimes, the provisions of the Indian Penal Code are applied by extrapolation and by the interpretations of the court. Although the Information Technology Act, 2000 provides for the punishment against computer-related offenses, there is no specific provision on cybercrime against women though they are widely reported.
