Introduction to Cyber Crimes

You get a message that says your bank account will be blocked unless you click a link and enter your card details. You click. Within minutes money has left your account, and the message came from a number you cannot trace, probably from another city and perhaps another country. Which offence is this? Who can be prosecuted, and in which court? Is a screenshot of the message evidence? These questions did not exist for the authors of the first penal code. This topic introduces how Indian criminal law deals with crimes committed through computers and the internet.

In two minutes

A cyber crime is an offence committed by or against a computer, network or electronic record; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita does not define it but covers it in many sections (electronic records in forgery, online stalking and voyeurism, cheating, intimidation), extends its reach to offences targeting a computer resource in India (s.1(5)(c)), and relies on the Information Technology Act 2000 for definitions and for the special cyber offences.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law of Crimes on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.