City lost 210 crore to cyber scammers in 2025 | Kolkata News – The Times of India

Kolkata: The city lost Rs 210 crore to cyber fraudsters in 2025, compared to Rs 279 crore in 2024. Kolkata Police managed to recover 30 percent of this lost amount in 2025, compared to only 10 percent recoveries in 2023-24.This was stated by the commissioner of Kolkata Police, Manoj Kumar Verma, on Friday, on the sidelines of a Pronam function in Tollygunge.While Verma claimed that heightened awareness helped save around Rs 60 crore of citizens’ money, he also stressed that awareness alone can act as the biggest deterrent against cybercrime. Cops said the restructuring of the cyber cell — with a unit dedicated to recoveries — and the introduction of new software left its mark in 2025.New software, which relies on AI, is capable of combating various technology-based crimes, including digital arrests.This year, cops want to recover at least 50 percent of the lost money, but stated that non-cooperation from certain business entities and smaller banks created bottlenecks for them. “We had issues with some cooperative banks where we felt the response time was reduced. We will soon hold meetings with important stakeholders to try and develop an SOP that will bring down the response time,” said an officer.Efforts are also underway to establish a cyber police station in each division of the Kolkata Police. While every division, except Bhangar, already has a special women police station, separate cyber police stations will now be set up in all 10 divisions of the city for white-collar crimes or cyber offences, as reported by TOI earlier. A proposal for this was already sent to the home department at Nabanna. Currently, there is one cyber police station under the detective department of Kolkata Police where all city complaints are filed.Additionally, each division has a cyber cell to block and recover money lost to fraud. However, they lack the infrastructure to apprehend suspects after investigating cases. This new initiative aims to address that shortcoming, according to sources at Lalbazar. However, there might be a lack of trained and skilled officers to run these new cyber police stations.Recently, Lalbazar instructed all its cyber cells to ‘pull up their socks’ and begin real recoveries in big amounts of fraud.Additionally, the cyber cells in each division of the Kolkata Police were also instructed to actively work on recovering money.Cops and cybercrime experts believe that the coordination between cops and the financial institutions — as also their presentation in courts — needs to be better coordinated. “Certain standards were set and we were asked to meet them,” recalled a cop who attended a meeting last week.Notably, cyber criminals use various tactics such as digital arrest, OTP sharing, ATM fraud, hotel booking, Aadhaar fraud, etc., to set traps. Once someone falls into the trap, their bank account starts getting emptied.