By Inderjit Badhwar
Every magazine cover is a statement. It reflects what we believe demands urgent public attention, what we think cannot be ignored, and what will shape our collective lives in ways we may not yet fully understand. For this issue, the choice of our cover story by Binny Yadav was both inevitable and unsettling: cybercrime in India, and the terrifying rise of what is now known as “digital arrest”.
On paper, India is a digital success story. It is the world’s largest market for digital payments, with nearly a billion mobile subscribers and some of the most ambitious AI and data initiatives globally. We speak proudly of our digital governance, our fintech unicorns, and our innovation ecosystems. Yet, beneath this glossy narrative lies a stark reality: India is also home to one of the fastest-growing cybercrime landscapes in the world.
The numbers tell part of the story. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s 2025 data, a cybercrime occurs in India every five seconds. In just one year, reported cases have leapt by more than 31 percent. But the numbers, staggering as they are, do not capture the lived experience of citizens who find themselves trapped in webs of deceit woven with terrifying precision. Behind each statistic is a human being: a pensioner stripped of his savings, a young professional conned out of a job offer, or a parent like me, momentarily convinced that their child has been taken.
What makes these crimes especially chilling is not only their volume, but their psychology. Cybercriminals today do not simply rely on brute-force hacking or random phishing. They prey on our deepest instincts—fear for our loved ones, trust in authority, desperation for opportunity. They mine our data trails, build profiles, and strike when we are most vulnerable. The so-called digital arrest scam exemplifies this. With a forged police badge, a cloned voice, and a threatening script, criminals create an illusion of state power so convincing that victims surrender reason in the space of a single phone call.
If fear is the new currency of crime, then profiling is its most lethal tool. Writes Binny: “I experienced this myself when a scammer timed a call to coincide with the moment I expected a message from my son. For a few agonising seconds, I believed his panicked cries were real. That momentary fracture of judgment is all it takes. If I, a journalist trained to doubt and verify, could falter, what chance do ordinary citizens stand?”
This is not simply a law-and-order issue. It is a national crisis that exposes the paradox of India’s digital journey. We are racing ahead in adoption, but limping behind in protection. Our legal frameworks remain outdated, our policing under-resourced, and our conviction rates abysmally low. In Mumbai, out of over two thousand online fraud cases in four years, there were just two convictions. Think about that: the odds are overwhelmingly in favour of the criminal, not the victim.
The consequences are corrosive. Every digital scam erodes trust—not just in technology, but in the institutions meant to safeguard us. Citizens who muster the courage to report fraud often encounter indifference, bureaucratic hurdles, or sheer incapacity in police stations. Victims are made to feel not only helpless against the criminals, but abandoned by the system. That double victimisation is what makes cybercrime such a grave societal wound.
There are, however, glimmers of hope. In July 2024, a West Bengal court sentenced nine people to life imprisonment for a digital arrest scam, recognising it as “organised intimidation through technology.” It was a landmark moment: the first time Indian jurisprudence elevated such fraud to the level of a crime of terror. If replicated, this precedent could serve as a deterrent. But one judgment alone cannot shift the tide. We need systemic reform.
The path forward is both clear and urgent. We must invest in cyber policing infrastructure—dedicated stations, trained personnel, and forensic tools. We must modernise our laws to explicitly cover new-age crimes like voice cloning, deepfake scams, and digital arrests. We must create fast-track courts for cybercrime, because justice delayed in such cases is justice permanently denied. And perhaps most importantly, we must educate citizens not just in technical hygiene, but in emotional resilience—recognising manipulation, resisting fear, and pausing before panic-driven action.
Our cover story is not an exercise in sensationalism. It is a warning. India’s push towards digitisation is irreversible, and rightly so. The opportunities of a digital economy are vast. But unless we confront the dark underbelly with equal determination, we risk turning our greatest strength into our greatest vulnerability. Cybercrime is not just about stolen money. It is about stolen trust, stolen dignity, and stolen peace of mind.
As editors, we chose this theme for the cover not only because it is timely, but because it is deeply human. Behind every statistic of cyber fraud lies the voice of someone silenced by shame, fear, or frustration. By telling their stories, by naming the gaps in our system, we hope to spark a larger conversation—one that forces policymakers, law enforcement, technologists, and citizens to act with urgency.
The fight against cybercrime will not be easy. Criminals are agile, global, and often faceless. But nations, when determined, can be resilient. If we combine legal clarity, policing strength, judicial innovation, and citizen awareness, we can turn the tide.
For now, the truth is simple and sobering: India’s digital revolution has created new frontiers of opportunity, but also new frontiers of fear. The question is whether we, as a society, will confront the latter with the same ambition we celebrate the former. That is why we put this story on our cover. Because cybercrime is not tomorrow’s problem. It is today’s crisis.