Cyber fraud cases in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, have been climbing every year, but the team investigating them has shrunk just as fast. The city's cyber crime unit now has only one inspector handling 104 pending cases, since current rules allow only an officer of inspector rank to formally investigate cyber fraud complaints. The fallout is landing squarely on victims, in several cases people are waiting up to two years just to get an FIR registered, and money frozen in fraud cases isn't being returned to them on time either.
How the workload multiplied 25 times over
Police records show that in 2021, the Bhopal cyber crime unit had 48 cases under investigation, handled by 10 inspectors posted to the unit at the time. That worked out to an average of four to five cases per officer, a manageable caseload for any investigator. By 2026, the picture had flipped entirely. The unit is now down to a single inspector with the authority to investigate, and the number of pending cases in front of that one officer has climbed to 104. In effect, one officer is now carrying roughly 25 times the workload an inspector handled five years ago.
Plenty of staff, but no power to investigate
The unit isn't actually short of personnel overall. It has seven sub-inspectors, three assistant sub-inspectors, 15 head constables and 56 constables on its rolls. But under existing rules, only an inspector-rank officer can legally carry a cyber fraud investigation forward. The rest of the staff can assist with technical work and preliminary steps, but they cannot advance a case's formal investigation. That's why, despite having a sizeable force on paper, the pace of investigations depends entirely on the capacity of one officer. Cyber crime cases are inherently complex to begin with, gathering digital evidence, tracing banking transactions and pulling information from networks that stretch across other states or even abroad can take months on its own. The staff shortage has slowed this process down even further, so much so that in several cases, FIRs are taking a long time to be registered even after the preliminary inquiry is complete.
Fake bank accounts and SIM cards remain a major obstacle
Fraudulent bank accounts and mobile SIM cards continue to be a major tool for cyber criminals. Police say fraudsters open bank accounts using rent agreements or other people's documents, and then use those accounts to move stolen money. Large numbers of SIM cards issued without proper checks similarly give criminals an easy channel to operate through, and several suspicious SIM cards aren't blocked in time, giving offenders an advantage. Whenever a cyber fraud case comes to light, police typically freeze the bank accounts involved to try and protect the victim's money. But because of multilayered transactions, networks spread across other states and countries, and the sheer complexity of banking procedures, victims often have to wait a long time before they actually get that frozen money back.
Commissioner says staffing will be reviewed
Responding to the issue, Bhopal Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar said that if the number of inspectors in the cyber crime unit is inadequate, the matter will be reviewed. He assured that staffing would be increased as needed so that cyber crime investigations can be sped up and victims can get justice in time.
