Digital divide to digital trap: How India’s cyber redressal system fails its most vulnerable citizens
A new comprehensive report, "The Status of Policing in India Report (SPIR) 2026: Cybercrime – Victim Perspectives and Systemic Responses", published jointly by Common Cause and Lokniti–CSDS, has highlighted deep vulnerabilities among women and historically marginalised groups in India’s expanding cyber domain. The study reveals that two-thirds of women (67%) perceive themselves as likely targets of online crimes due to their gender, with 29% considering themselves "very likely" targets compared to 19% of men.
Women also report heightened levels of fear regarding digital offences, including 58% expressing high fear of losing money to digital scams, 53% fearing theft or misuse of personal identity documents such as Aadhaar cards, and 52% fearing non-consensual recordings. In parallel, Parliamentary Standing Committee findings cited in the report document a 239% surge in cybercrimes against women between 2017 and 2022, accompanied by a 140% rise in cyberstalking, harassment, and impersonation cases from 2021 to 2025.
Perceptions of identity-based targeting are equally pronounced along caste and community lines. Scheduled Tribes (ST) report the highest perceived caste-based online vulnerability, with 59% feeling targeted online because of their identity (24% "very likely" and 35% "somewhat likely"), compared to 44% among Scheduled Castes (SC) and 39% among General Category respondents. In addition, 46% of all respondents feel vulnerable to online targeting based on their sexual orientation, with 18% reporting it as "very likely".
Qualitative interviews in the report reveal organized online hate campaigns deliberately directed at religious minorities. These operations, such as networks operating under the moniker "Bhagwa Love Trap", employed decentralized sleeper cells to track interfaith couples, dox Muslim women, and circulate non-consensual photographs and abusive videos across social media platforms without effective intervention from platform intermediaries.
Exploitative Tactics and Institutional Compounding of Vulnerabilities
The report documents how cybercriminal networks systematically prey on individuals with lower digital exposure, including rural populations and economically weaker sections. Overall, respondents without formal education showed higher cybercrime victimization rates (17%) than those with college degrees (13%). Cyber hygiene practices also mirror socioeconomic disparities: while 68% of affluent users and 71% of college-educated individuals employ two-step verification on UPI apps, only 43% of the poor and 26% of non-literate users do so. Fraud syndicates capitalize on these systemic gaps through social engineering operations.
In Odisha, for instance, syndicates established deceptive welfare distribution drives offering subsidized rice to collect personal credentials and Aadhaar details, which were subsequently used to generate fraudulent mule bank accounts and pre-activated SIM kits sold in cyber hubs like Mewat.
The harms inflicted on underprivileged and minority individuals are frequently compounded by institutional encounters with law enforcement. While higher-income victims often cited polite assistance at specialized cyber cells, socioeconomically disadvantaged complainants described facing police apathy, hostility, and victim-blaming.
When a 16-year-old son of a domestic worker attempted to report an extortion scam, local police dismissed the family, termed him a liar, and refused registration until his mother's employers intervened. Similar biases are visible in case outcomes involving so-called "money mules", where low-income individuals, such as delivery drivers or small enterprise owners tricked into sharing credentials, were arrested and subjected to prolonged detention without bail, while the masterminds directing the syndicates remained untraced.
The institutional machinery for addressing cyber offences exhibits severe operational friction that disproportionately burdens marginalized populations. Although rural residents report cybercrimes to the police at higher rates than urban victims (55% versus 48%), they face significantly greater procedural hurdles. Rural victims were twice as likely as urban complainants to make five or more trips to police stations (38% versus 19%).
Similarly, wait times at police stations reflect socioeconomic divides: 49% of affluent victims were attended to within an hour, whereas only 16% of poor victims received attention within the same timeframe. Direct access to judicial remedies also remains restricted, with only 20% of cases reaching the courts and 45% of those remaining mired in ongoing investigations.
Financial extraction and informal influence heavily govern case outcomes and restitution, leaving vulnerable victims without structural support. More than a quarter of all reporting victims (27%) paid bribes to police personnel. This corrupt practice is starkly skewed against underprivileged groups: 51% of poor victims paid bribes compared to 12% of affluent complainants, and 35% of female victims paid bribes compared to 22% of men.
Furthermore, restitution remains largely unattainable without external leverage: 75% of victims who paid no bribe recovered none of their lost money, whereas those paying bribes were three times as likely to recover full losses (38%). A parallel dynamic exists regarding personal connections, where victims utilizing influential contacts to pressure police were more than three times as likely to recover full amounts (28%) compared to those without influence (8%).
The institutional dissatisfaction index reflects these disparities, with female victims (26%), rural complainants (32%), and economically disadvantaged victims (29%) expressing the highest levels of extreme dissatisfaction with the police handling of cybercrimes.
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