Codified law needed to deal with cyber crime: Justice Misra

Supreme Court judge Justice Dipak Misra today called for a codified law as well as imparting proper training to law enforcement officers to deal with the issue of cyber crime and match the level of intelligence of the criminals who commit such offences.
Expressing concern over the growing instances of cyber crime, Justice Misra said, "There is a need to come up with a code, a mechanism to deal with cyber crime. Through a computer a man can create an artificial system which can have much more knowledge than what human mind can contain. Knowledge is powerful and knowledge can be dangerous."

"We need to train the officers and make them efficient and competent in these laws with a different kind of branch as everyone cannot do it."
Speaking at the International Conference on Cyberlaw, Cyber crime and Cyber Security at the India International Centre, the judge also spelled out the difficulties likely to arise in dealing with the issue.
"Litigations are cropping up with regard to domain disputes, Intellectual Property Rights, email contracts, defamation, etc. And the High Courts in our country are dealing with them but there are difficulties like how does one safeguard their right to privacy?
"There can be jurisdictional issues i.E. Which court has jurisdiction in the matter and that has to be fixed. Third problem is finding the identity of the offenders which is very difficult to trace," he said.

Suggesting ways to handle the Internet crimes, Justice Misra said that "people who engage in cyber crime have the potential and knowledge to advise us how to control these crimes" adding that their level of intelligence needs to be matched to crack the cases and catch the criminals.
P K Malhotra, Law Secretary, Ministry of Law and Justice, who was also present at the conference, said, "It is significant that countries address and strengthen their cyber-legal regimes which would also promote growth of e-commerce".
Pavan Duggal, advocate and organiser of the conference, said the conference was a step forward to discuss the cyber crime related policies and highlighted the need for all the stakeholders in the digital and mobile ecosystem to work together and address the complicated legal nuances.