Permeance of ICT in Crime in India

ii Summary This research aims at investigating the extent to which Information and Communication Technologies have influenced crime in India. The study has been conducted in the city of Kolkata with the help of the Kolkata Police. Three types of offences, namely, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries and frauds, were chosen for the study and data about the suspects, victims and the offences was obtained from the police records corresponding to these cases. We have chosen burglary cases from 20011 and 2012 and fraud cases from 2010, 2011 and 2012. All cases were selected form the Kolkata Police Headquarters. On analyzing our data, we have found that frauds have the highest amount of digital involvement out of the three crimes. We have found that the reliance of suspects on digital technologies for committing the crime is minimal. We have found some interesting statistics about digital investigation resources employed by the police. It has been observed that camera image confiscation and phone data confiscation have been employed in an unexpectedly high number of cases by the police. Overall, we have found a higher than expected level of digital involvement in crime in India. Compared to the Netherlands, crime in India has a lower degree of digital involvement. The difference between the two countries, however, is less than expected. iii iv Acknowledgements