Achieving another notoriety, Andhra Pradesh has topped the list of cyber crimes committed across the country.
According to a report on crimes in India in 2011, published by the National Crime Records Bureau, 349 of the total 1,791 cyber crime cases registered last year were reported from the state. Maharashtra followed with 306 cases.
The report says among the common cyber crimes are hacking, putting up obscene pictures and texts and tampering computer source documents.
Among the cities, Hyderabad came fifth, with 61 out of 200 cases registered under various Sections of the IPC coming from the state capital.
Stressing that unemployment among educated youth could be one factor in the rising cyber crime graph, a senior official from the city cyber crime cell said, “There is a need to introduce filter in sites most frequented.”
Dr Minhha Masirabadi, a psychologist at Apollo Hospital, said cyber crime is a new class of crime and is increasing rapidly due to ever-growing Internet penetration.
“People are relatively more computer literate in Andhra Pradesh and the crime rate is directly proportional to that literacy rate. The government should also take stringent action on people violating the rules (as deterrent).”