Honouring UN Peacekeepers: Safeguarding Peace in a Changing World
Introduction
Today, on the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, we honour the brave individuals who risk their lives to uphold peace in the world’s most fragile and conflict-ridden regions. These peacekeepers are symbols of hope, diplomacy, and resilience. But as the world changes, so do the arenas of conflict. In today’s interconnected age, peace and safety are no longer confined to physical spaces—they extend to the digital realm. As we commemorate their service, we must also reflect on the new frontlines of peacekeeping: the internet, where misinformation, cyberattacks, and digital hate threaten stability every day.
The Legacy of UN Peacekeepers
Since 1948, UN Peacekeepers have served in over 70 missions, protecting civilians, facilitating political processes, and rebuilding societies. From conflict zones in Africa to the Balkans, they’ve worked in the toughest terrains to keep the peace. Their role is built on neutrality, integrity, and international cooperation. But as hybrid warfare becomes more prominent and digital threats increasingly influence real-world violence, the peacekeeping mandate must evolve. Traditional missions are now accompanied by the need to understand and respond to digital disruptions that can escalate local tensions or undermine democratic institutions.
The Digital Battlefield
In recent years, we’ve seen how misinformation, deepfakes, online radicalisation, and coordinated cyberattacks can destabilise peace processes. Disinformation campaigns can polarise communities, hinder humanitarian efforts, and provoke violence. Peacekeepers now face the added challenge of navigating conflict zones where digital tools are weaponised. The line between physical and virtual conflict is blurring. Cybersecurity has gone beyond being just a technical issue and is now a peace and security issue as well. From securing communication systems to monitoring digital hate speech that could incite violence, peacekeeping must now include digital vigilance and strategic digital diplomacy.
Building a Culture of Peace Online
Safeguarding peace today also means protecting people from harm in the digital space. Governments, tech companies, civil society, and international organisations must come together to build digital resilience. This includes investing in digital literacy, combating online misinformation, and protecting human rights in cyberspace. Peacekeepers may not wear blue helmets online, but their spirit lives on in every effort to make the internet a safer, kinder, and more truthful place. The role of youth, educators, and responsible digital citizens has never been more crucial. A culture of peace must be cultivated both offline and online.
Conclusion: A Renewed Pledge for Peace
On this UN Peacekeepers’ Day, let us not only honour those who have served and sacrificed but also renew our commitment to peace in all its dimensions. The world’s conflicts are evolving, and so must our response. As we support peacekeepers on the ground, let’s also become peacebuilders in the digital world, amplifying truth, rejecting hate, and building safer, inclusive communities online. Peace today is not just about silencing guns but also silencing disinformation. The call for peace is louder than ever. Let’s answer it, both offline and online.
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Introduction
The trajectory of India's digital economy is growing at an unprecedented rate, and so is India's cybercrime ecosystem. Parliamentary data tabled before the Rajya Sabha in May 2024 by the MHA suggests an overwhelming 900% growth in cybercrime complaints from 2021 to '25, while annual losses crossed 22,800 crore in 2024. The structural issues like the low victim restitution rate, the lack of forensic infrastructure, issues of jurisdiction related to offshore fraud factories targeting Indian citizens, and the huge disparity in awareness levels amongst India's youngest online citizens continue to exist. This brief brings out the clear trends in cybercrime, the role of institutional mechanisms in its prevention and response, failure points, and recommends appropriate policy interventions from the perspective of CyberPeace.
The Data Imperative
Since its operationalisation in 2019 by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), the NCRP serves as India's most significant institutional apparatus for cybercrime reporting and response. Data placed before the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 30 July 2025 show that, with almost no exception, complaints of cybercrime have increased far more quickly than most traditional indicators of public safety. Between 2021 and June 2025, the NCRP received 6.59 million complaints, evidence of both a sustained and escalating expansion of India's cyber threat profile. Complaints per year more than quadrupled from 4.52 lakh in 2021 to 19.18 lakh in 2024 (324% over the period); by 2025, the NCRP had received 28.15 lakh complaints, a 523 percent rise compared with the 2021 baseline:
Clearly, cyber-enabled crime is no longer an occasional crisis but a systemic governance issue requiring consistent regulation and institution-building.
The financial fallout has also accelerated dramatically. Figures indicate that reported financial losses due to cybercrime jumped from 2,290 crore in 2022 to 22,812 crore in 2024 a 895% leap in two years:
Though response mechanisms such as the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) successfully blocked or recovered close to 8,690 crore as of January 2026, victims appear to get back only about 2.18 percent of the losses they report.
In most areas, reporting and response have expanded greatly, but both the rate and scale of cyber-enabled financial fraud continue to outstrip India's remediation and law enforcement capacity.
Threat Typology of India’s Fraud Ecosystem
The nature of cyber crime in India has evolved from an opportunistic volume-based activity to a layered transnational criminal environment. I4C intelligence as tabled in Parliament reveals investment scams as the biggest threat: they accounted for 76% of the financial fraud lost in 2025 (although only 35% of complaints were filed, thus, a very high value per case was lost).
Digital arrest frauds, which tap on citizens' unawareness that "digital arrest" is not permissible under Indian law, rose from 39,925 cases (91 crore) in 2022 to 123,672 cases (1,935crore) in 2024.
The fast rise in the number of incidents as well as in the volume of fraud clearly points out that digital arrest fraud has moved away from the phase of novel scam typology to a formidable cyber-extortion landscape. The main orchestrators of investment, trading, dating, and digital arrest scams targeting Indian citizens were recently identified by the I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar as transnational criminal scam networks in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Hence, this issue does not only fall within the domain of domestic law enforcement but constitutes a transnational cybercrime requiring parallel financial intelligence, diplomatic initiative, platform responsibility, and international investigative collaboration.
Geographic Concentration
Maharashtra and UP register the highest volumes in total complaints at 3.03 lakh and 3.01 lakh, owing to them being the financial capital and most populous state, respectively. Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, WB, Telangana, TN, Rajasthan, and Haryana register above 1 lakh complaints each. However, the critical information that is being missed is that while complaint rate growth is the fastest in Tier 2 and 3 geographies (Haryana leads per-capita complaint rate with 381/100k people in 2023; Telangana (261); Uttarakhand (243)), this signifies rural digital growth as a risk multiplier.
Institutional Architecture: Mechanisms and Performances
India's institutional response to cybercrime, led by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), is one of the world's largest real-time fraud detection and prevention ecosystems. The backbone of this is the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS), which has onboarded over 700 banks, payment service providers, e-commerce portals, digital wallets, and, since the Standard Operating Procedure was issued on 2nd January 2026, virtual asset service providers and crypto exchanges. This interconnected network allows for prompt freezing of funds and timely fraud intervention during the 'golden hour' of a cybercrime report.
Institutional capacity is robust, with approximately 8,690 crore saved via the CFCFRMS since its inception for over 24.65 lakh complaints. The national cybercrime helpline (1930) receives close to 10,000 calls daily, while the Suspect Registry has enabled the rejection of 9,519 crore via the detection of 23.05 lakh suspect entities and 27.37 lakh mule accounts. In parallel, the CyTrain platform has expanded training by registering 151,081 police and judicial officers and issuing 142,025 certificates. Cyberforensic labs in all 33 States and Union Territories have received central assistance totalling 132.93 crore, and data-driven interstate crime analytics and offender linkages through the Samanvaya and Pratibimb platforms have led to 21,857 arrests.
Ecosystem Gaps
Through I4C, CFCFRMS, CyTrain, and the establishment of forensic infrastructure in states, India’s cybercrime ecosystem has greatly grown. But due to the rapid proliferation of cybercrime, systemic shortcomings are revealed regarding the restoration of victims, investigation, forensic capacity, cross-border enforcement, awareness, and stakeholder coordination:
- Victim Restitution Deficit: Although the total of ₹ 8,690 crore frozen has increased, the refund for victim compensation is limited to only ₹ 167 crore (2.18%) due to lengthy restoration processes relying on court orders.
- Forensic Capacity Limitations: 2 national, state-level, unevenly equipped cyber forensic labs can’t match the needs of over 10 million cybercrime complaints per year.
- Low conviction rate: The investigations of cybercrimes suffer from evidence collection and criminal proceedings, leading to limited conviction rates.
- Cross-border enforcement challenges: Many of the investment and digital arrest scams, in fact, are originating from Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, rendering the cybercrime response mechanisms of India helpless.
- Lack of Awareness: First-time digital users are quite prone to online scams and fraud, and many of the victims continue not reporting due to social stigma and lack of confidence.
- Partial Stakeholder Integration: Banks and small financial institutions, small companies, and emerging virtual asset providers not yet on board allow the money to slip through without being tracked.
CyberPeace Insights: Strategic Way Forward
India has already built a relatively mature response structure for cybercrime with I4C, CFCFRMS, and CyTrain and is coordinating the financial sector on it. The way ahead lies in outcome-oriented improvements and not just in the ability to report and intercept more. Here are the priority interventions that address the most important institutional shortcomings identified in the current ecosystem:
- Fast-track victim restoration: Introduce time-bound victim restoration mechanisms for low-value incidents through simplified processes and mandate national-level roll-out of successful Lok Adalat-based settlement mechanisms.
- District-level cyber forensics: Establish cyber forensic support units at the district level and enhance access to mobile, cloud, and blockchain forensic capabilities.
- AI-powered fraud prevention: Mandate deep-fake and voice-clone detection mechanisms across all financial institutions and telecom networks; embed predictive risk analytics into transaction screening frameworks.
- Cyber Suraksha Gram initiative: Increase digital fraud awareness across all common service centres, Jan Dhan enrollment schemes, and rural banking channels, and tackle the awareness asymmetry.
- Regional cybercrime coordination: Establish real-time, operational intelligence-sharing mechanisms with Southeast Asian economies, which have become home to large scam networks preying on Indian citizens.
- Specialised cyber prosecution ecosystem: Develop exclusive cyber courts, standardise digital evidence procedures, and broaden the scope of CyTrain to include the development of specialised cadres of investigators and prosecutors capable of handling increasingly complex cybercrime cases.
Conclusion
The 22,812 crore lost due to cybercrime in 2024 was more than a mere figure; it signifies a serious concern regarding citizen trust, economic security, and digital inclusion. Though India's institutional response to cybercrime is one of the largest, with an operational I4C and a CFCFRMS functioning in real time, the victim compensation and prosecution mechanism falls short. It's time for implementation: faster recovery of resources, increased enforcement, a larger scale of awareness, and finally, translating the institutional innovations into concrete justice for victims nationwide.
References
- https://sansad.in/getFile/annex/270/AU1341_tmaxdx.pdf?source=pqars
- https://www.mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/pdfs/par2025-pdfs/LS02122025/452.pdf
- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2244504®=3&lang=2
- https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2025/oct/doc2025107659501.pdf
- https://www.medianama.com/2025/08/223-india-cybercrime-500-percent-increase-2021-2024/
- https://theprint.in/india/cybercrime-saw-24-spike-in-2025-indians-lost-rs-22495-crore-mainly-in-investment-scams/2859930/
Executive Summary
A video is being widely shared on social media claiming to show a delivery boy assaulting a woman. In the viral clip, a man approaches a woman to deliver some items. An argument soon breaks out between the two, followed by pushing and shoving that escalates into a physical fight. The purported delivery boy is then seen knocking the woman to the ground and allegedly beating her. Research by CyberPeace Research Wing found that the viral video is scripted.
Claim:
“A delivery boy brings a parcel, and the customer comes outside to collect it. As soon as the delivery boy hands the parcel to the woman, it falls from her hands, following which the female customer starts assaulting the delivery boy. In anger, the delivery boy also begins hitting the woman and knocks her to the ground, brutally beating her with kicks and slaps. Although the woman was at fault, the delivery boy should not have reacted so violently.”
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2826948067671726
Fact Check
To verify the viral video claiming to show a delivery boy assaulting a woman, we conducted a reverse image search using keyframes from the clip. During the search, we found the same video posted on the Facebook account of a user named Vipin Chauhan on August 21, 2026. The viral clip appears in the 2-minute-33-second-long video. The caption accompanying the video states that it is a pre-planned (scripted) video.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1551896343642588
During the research, we also found the same video on the same user's Instagram account, where it was described as scripted.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DcTAF_ZsUnv/
Upon reviewing the Instagram user's account, we found several other videos featuring men and women engaged in physical altercations. The captions of all these videos clearly state that they are scripted.
Conclusion
The evidence gathered during our research clearly establishes that the video being shared with the claim that a delivery boy assaulted a woman is scripted and does not depict a genuine incident. The same video was found on the social media accounts of the creator, where it was explicitly described as scripted. We also found several other similar videos on the user's account, all of which were identified as pre-planned or scripted content.
Introduction
The advent of Electronic Vehicles (EVs) represents a transformative leap towards a more sustainable and environmentally conscious transportation future by nations. However, as these vehicles become increasingly connected and reliant on advanced technological systems, a parallel concern emerges—data privacy. Integrating sophisticated technologies in EVs, such as GPS tracking, biometric authentication, and in-car connectivity, raises substantial questions about the collection, storage, and potential misuse of sensitive personal information. This intersection of automotive innovation and data privacy underscores the need for comprehensive solutions and regulatory frameworks to ensure that the benefits of electric vehicles are realised without compromising the privacy and security of their users.
Electronic vehicles primarily record three types of data;
- Driving behaviour and patterns: The e-vehicle records braking and driving patterns, including acceleration, speed, and swerve. Some vehicles even track air conditioning usage and airbag deployment to determine the point of failure in the event of a crash.
- Location data: The e-vehicles also track GPS systems to gauge the speed and direction of the vehicle.
- EV functions and use of telematic services: Monitoring of EV functions includes battery use management, battery charging history, battery deterioration, electrical system functions and software version information.
Data Privacy requirements of companies
Companies manufacturing e-vehicles are saddled with several data privacy requirements as concerns about consumer safety. Data collected by e-vehicles may be sensitive in nature. Location tracking is a key issue that has garnered attention. The constant recording of a driver's whereabouts can lead to the creation of detailed profiles, raising questions about the potential misuse or unauthorised access to this sensitive information. The risk of surveillance, stalking, or even theft of valuable personal data is a genuine concern for EV owners.
Moreover, integrating smart features, such as voice recognition, biometric authentication, and in-car personal assistants, adds another layer of complexity. These features require the collection and processing of personal data. If not handled securely, they may become vulnerable to hacking or unauthorised access, leading to identity theft or other malicious activities. Additionally, Smart charging systems offer convenience by allowing remote monitoring and control of charging, but they also gather extensive data. The geographical data collected during charging may raise concerns about location privacy.
Striking a delicate balance between leveraging this data for enhancing vehicle performance and user experience while safeguarding the privacy of EV owners is paramount. Transparent privacy policies, secure data storage practices, and stringent encryption protocols are essential components of a comprehensive approach to data protection. If a company is eyeing the international market or utilising cloud-based software with decentralised global data storage, it must also navigate international privacy and data protection laws. A prime example is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a globally recognised and stringent data protection law applicable to both European-based companies and international entities providing goods, services, or monitoring activities of residents within Europe.
Manufacturers of these vehicles are subjected to compliance with this comprehensive legal framework. Obligations on companies are levied by them being data fiduciaries; dual liability may also emanate since some data fiduciaries may also qualify as data processors. Special care must be taken when data is being transferred to third parties.
Further, compliance with consumer safety laws is also an important consideration. In India, the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 safeguards the rights of consumers, holding manufacturers, sellers, and service providers responsible for any harm resulting from faulty or defective products. This extends the Act's coverage to include manufacturers and sellers of internet and technology-based products. When read with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 (DPDP Act), the Consumer Protection Act of 2019 takes on additional significance. The DPDP Act, focusing on the security of an individual's digital personal data, introduces provisions such as mandatory consent, purpose limitation, data minimisation, obligatory security measures by organisations, data localisation, and enforcing accountability and compliance. These provisions apply to information generated by and for consumers, offering a comprehensive framework for protecting digital personal data.
Conclusion
The intersection of e-vehicles and data privacy necessitates a careful and comprehensive approach to ensure the coexistence of automotive innovation and user security. As electric vehicles record intricate data related to driving behaviour, location, and telematic services, companies manufacturing these vehicles must navigate a complex landscape of data privacy requirements. The potential risks associated with location tracking, smart features, and the extensive data collected during charging underscore the importance of transparent privacy policies, secure data storage practices, and stringent encryption protocols. Moreover, as companies expand globally, compliance with international privacy laws like the GDPR becomes imperative. Balancing the enhancement of vehicle performance and user experience with the safeguarding of privacy is paramount. Manufacturers, deemed as data fiduciaries, must exercise diligence, especially when transferring data to third parties. Additionally, adherence to consumer safety laws, such as the Consumer Protection Act of 2019, further emphasises the need for a holistic and vigilant approach to ensure the responsible use of data in the evolving landscape of e-vehicles.
References
- https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1556&context=chtlj
- https://cyberswitching.com/electric-car-charging-and-data-privacy/#:~:text=Smart%20charging%20systems%20provide%20convenience,in%20safeguarding%20EV%20user%20privacy
