BHUBANESWAR: Cybercrime has shot up in the state by a disturbing 159 percent with 824 cases registered last year as against 317 in 2016. Experts attribute the alarming rise to easy availability of internet, unchecked use of social media and lack of proper mechanism to prevent the offence."Once a video or photograph is uploaded in the internet there is no way we can remove or erase it. Even though there has been instances where social media sites have removed objectionable post following instructions, but by that time it has already been sourced and circulated by multiple users, which is very difficult to track," said Sunitha Krishnan, founder director of Prajwala, an organisation working on violence against women. She was speaking at the two-day 'National Convention on Emerging Challenges of Violence against Women: Cyber crime and witch hunting' that started here on Thursday.Inaugurating the national convention chief minister Naveen Patnaik said "cybercrime is an emerging challenge for the entire country. There is a need for creating awareness among women by way of promoting digital inclusion and through digital literacy and imparting technology training."He also announced that two women counselling centres would be opened at Rourkela and Balasore Of the total cybercrime cases, 195 are on objectionable viral videos of women of which 97 were reported in 2017 alone. Other forms of violence against women through cybercrime include voyeurism, stalking, cyber bullying, morphing, email spoofing and cyber defamation."We continue to face challenges when we find that cyber criminals committing offences (mostly hacking) are from other countries. We hardly get assistance from foreign countries to progress in investigation," additional director general of crime branch, Santosh Upadhyay, said.The convention, organised by Odisha State Commission for Women (OSCW), is being attended to by chairpersons of 18 state commissions for women, police officers and voluntary organisations.Chairperson of OSCW, Lopamudra Buxipatra said, "The deliberations of the convention will go a long way in curbing the two major and heinous forms of violence against women."

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