The invention of the software technology, computer, e-mail and internet has brought alongwith it modern crimes like sending threatening e-mail, defamatory e-mail, hacking e-mail, e-mail bombs, etc. in an exclusive interview to The Navhind Times the Director of Asian School of Cyber Laws, Mr. Rohas Nagpal goes deep and analyses the cyber crimes prevalent in India, Excerpts.

What kind of cyber crimes are mostly prevalent in India?
The most common are e-mail based crimes in India. Like one we had in Bangalore, in which whenever the marriage of a girl used to get fixed up, the perspective groom family used to get a defamatory e-mail saying that the girl is of loose character, resulting in breaking of the marriage of the girl. Three times it happened but in the case of the fourth, the groom liked her and said let us not trust the e-mail and contacted the cyber police and said "I just want to know who was behind the e-mail?" It was her legal guardian of the property.

Do the Cases of Cyber crime on the rise.
Of course, there are number of cases and Karnataka is leading in this kind of cases. Bangalore being the Cyber City of India, it has seen many cases of hacking, source code and pornography, Karnataka has no cyber cell but it has established police station exclusively investigating cyber crimes. And it has four Deputy SP's handling such crimes.

Are these crimes punishable and if so under what Act?
Crimes relating to source code comes under section 65 of Information Technology (IT) Act. Hacking comes under 66 of IT Act while the pornography comes under 66 of IT Act. All are punishable under IT Act.

What do you mean by cyber murder?
A hacker breaks into hospital medical records and maliciously alters prescriptions. Say, if a patient is allergic to penicillin, the hacker adds 500 mg of penicillin to his usual dose of medication. The nurse administers the drug causing immediate death. For example one mafia don was shot by his rivals in America, he did not die of bullets but he was injured and admitted to hospital. Now his enemy group hacked into hospital computer, changed the prescription of the medical and included the medicines to which he was allergic. Nurse gave him the medicine and the person expired. Many cases like these have taken place in America.

How terrorists can misuse it?
Terrorists can play havoc by using a technology called steganography. Terrorists like Osama bin Laden routinely communicate with their global cronies by encrypting messages into image files, accessible to only to those with the password. Therefore, that 36-24-36 bimbo you last saw on a site or that picture of Aishwarya Rai you downloaded from the net might actually have contained a devastating message in codes. There are over 50 sites which give you the recipe for making RDX bombs.

Drug dealing: narcotic drugs are sold on auction sites under innocuous-sounding names. It can be 50 grams of honey for 50 grams of cocaine.

Money laundering: E-gold site where hawala transactions are done in broad daylight. You are given tips of how to trade in gold an make illegal pots of money.

Forgery: sites that teach students how to use high-end drum scanners for creating look-alike certificates using Microsoft word!

There are 20 types of listed cyber crimes. Fortunately, not all of them are prevalent here. However, we do get reports of threatening e-mails and of women receiving obnoxious calls from strangers responding to their pictures and phone numbers on call girl sites.

How do you smoke out cyber criminals?
Every e-mail leaves behind a trace leading back to its point of origin in the form of an e-mail header. To view the header all you need to do is to press 'options' button and then go to 'preferences'. This will throw up two boxes where you can view your e-mail in full, complete with the IP addresses. The IP address, usually a number like 120.12.111, can be traced to VSNL. But only the police have the authority to trace back the route of the message beyond this point right up to the doorstep of the offending subscriber.

What if site is over written?
There is no way out. But there is cyber forensic. Even if you wipe off something, there are techniques, suppose if you wipe off 27 times still it can be traced. But techniques are very very costly. Secondly we have to go to site who is maintaining server and request them to give us. Possibly this kind of server may not be available in India. It may not be impossible. Even if any one wipes out the site still it can be traced.

Can this kind of cases be policed?
It is virtually impossible. Just like it is unfair to expect the police to halt this conventional crimes, similarly it is impossible to curb it. Because it is not practical. But some steps could be taken to regulate. For example if all states set up a cell, then people come to know about it. Then, the fear could be created in the minds of the criminals, that they cannot go scot free and they can be nabbed. Once these criminals realize that their states and cities can trace them, lot of fear would be instilled and automatically cyber crime would climb down.

I am sure that 99 per cent of people by and large think that e-mail address cannot be traced but if they come to know that almost all the cases no matter what wrong name they give, what E-mail address thy open, they can still be traced then the crime rare will fall. It is just a matter of education. Newspapers and magazines have major role to play in curbing, educating public on cyber crimes.

How incriminating floppy could be wiped out?
If you want to wipe an incriminating floppy clean, all you need to do is place it close to a cellular phone or even a hot cup of coffee. Chances are that the strong magnetic fields they create will interfere with the floppy and corrupt it. A CD, of course, is more robust customer.

Are this kind of crimes punishable under Information Technology Act?
The Indian cyber crimes are punishable under the Information Technology Act, 2000 with 10 years in prison for hacking and fines of crore of rupees for passing viruses.

Even in conventional crimes, the accused can destroy the evidence. In that case you cannot blame the police. Suppose somebody commits murder and melts the knife which was used for murder and body was also destroyed in the crematorium. What evidence is left.