Kerala: Cyber forensic cell in vigilance

Thiruvananthapuram: As digital evidences are becoming common in most corruption cases these days, the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) is setting up in-house cyber forensic cells. Three cyber cells equipped with tools for extracting digital evidences from various types of gadgets like mobile phones and hard disks are being set up. While one will be set up at the VACB headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, the other two will be coming up at Ernakulam and Kozhikode. As many as 42 officials of VACB, in the rank of civil police officer to DYSPs, have been given training at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) in using cyber forensic tools. 

The state government has also given administrative sanction to a proposal of Vigilance director Loknath Behera to set up the cyber forensic cells at an estimated initial cost of  Rs 35 lakh. The VACB will soon initiate steps for procuring the cyber tools for the cells. VACB DySP (headquarters) Mr E.S. Bijumon said that the cyber forensic cells would be basically helping the vigilance investigators in extracting information from digital gadgets. At present the VACB does not have cyber cells and hence it was depending on cyber labs of other agencies within the state and outside. This often leads to delay in investigation.

Getting call details records of mobile phones, extracting data from hard disks, mobile phone and other digital gadgets and analysing video footages and audio files from recorders are some of the basic activities of cyber cells. The evidence gathered by the proposed cyber cells may not be accepted as evidence before courts as courts would only consider evidence obtained by certified cyber forensic laboratories. Hence, the proposed cyber cells would be using tools that would extract digital evidences from gadgets without tampering it so that the same gadgets could be later sent to certified forensic laboratories to gather evidences to be produced before court. The VACB had recently decided to purchase surveillance gadgets like pinhole cameras and pen cameras for anti-corruption activities.