FIA sees major hike in online crimes.

Byline: Imran Mukhtar

ISLAMABAD -- The Cybercrime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) witnessed an unprecedented hike in online crimes during 2020 as it received five times more complaints than the previous year.

The year 2020 had been a challenging period for the FIA Cybercrime Wing due to the unprecedented hike in cybercrime reporting, according to the official data of the agency.

Around 50 percent increase has been recorded in complaints about online financial crimes, harassment, women harassment, and child pornography in 2020 than in the previous year. The data shows that overall cybercrime reporting increased almost five times as compared to the previous year.

The total complaints lodged at the Cybercrime Wing for year 2020 were 94,227 which were mainly relating to financial fraud, harassment, stalking and unauthorized access.

However, the wing disposed of 0.1 million complaints in the earlier filed complaints during 2020.

To deal with the increased workload, the wing has established a complaint management unit at each reporting centre of the Cybercrime Wing.

Besides this, specialized investigation units have been established to deal with financial crime, harassment, defamation, women harassment, child pornography and high-profile cases. These units successfully disposed of 9,073 enquiries and registered 374 cases during 2020. The number of enquiries is almost 50 percent more than 2019 and the number of registered cases is 100 percent more than the previous year.

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