Summer Internship with Cyber Crime Cell, Gurgaon Police – Yashaswini Chouhan from ITMU Gurgaon

Yashaswini Chouhan (second row, third from left, in the red top) found an internship which helped her realize her passion and select an unconventional career for future. Yashaswini is a Computer Science & Engineering student at ITMU Gurgaon. Read on to dig into her experience of interning with Cyber Crime Cell under Gurgaon Police.

The internship hunt started just after a notice issued by our faculty in the college that this year internship is compulsory and students will be assessed for the same. I started looking on the internship portals for a suitable one but could rarely find any as just after the 2nd year of engineering, I did not really have strong skills of developing a software or a website. After surfing a couple of internship portals I finally landed on Google and just Googled “Summer Internship Gurgaon.” After a couple of pages I saw a daily news website link and found out an internship in that article.

It was an internship at Cyber Crime Cell of the Gurgaon Police. The Internship was led by Commissioner Alok Mittal and Joint Commissioner Vivek Sharma. The main coordinator Rakshit Tandon , Advisor Cyber Crime Cell Gurgaon Police and Consultant IAMAI, trained the students on Cyber Crime Investigation and coordinated the complete event. Rakshit Sir was our mentor and indeed was the best ever. 30 students from various Universities participated in this Internship which started on 3rd June 2014 and was completed on 7th July. The students participated were mainly from B.Tech and M.Tech streams and also students of Information Security and Cyber Laws.

First Day reporting was at the Cyber Crime Cell. We met police officers who were not in uniforms! We had an introduction session wherein students as well as the officers introduced themselves and also told us that as they weren’t the traditional crime police they need not wear uniform everyday. Rakshit Sir gave a brief presentation of the scenario of cyber crime in the country seeing which i was totally shocked . We were then asked to choose a project among 5 projects on which we will research during the internship, and at the end, we will come out with inputs from our side which could help the police work better and more efficiently.

Second day was a formal inauguration of the internship by the Commissioner. It was grand…the conference hall, the way we were being treated by the police. Commissioner Sir then had an interaction with the interns and told us what he is expecting from us to which we promised we would give in our best.

During the Internship we were trained in all the 5 topics which were–
1)Mobile Crime and investigation
2) Email Crime and investigation
3) Social Media Crime and investigation
4) Ecommerce Frauds and investigation
5) Web Site Hacking and investigation

For my research project I had chosen Ecommerce Frauds and Investigation.

We had session with Mr.Pavan Duggal , Advocate Supreme Court wherein he told us about the existing IT Act, how it’s being interpreted in cases and how there are still some flaws in the system. Rakshit Sir intensively trained us on the investigation of all the 5 topics , which, of course, i cannot disclose here. We came across how vulnerable people are to such crimes as the modus operandi in most of the cases was not the criminal’s trick but of the user’s negligence and lack of awareness . We worked on live cases and cracked case studies, wherein we came across majority of cases involving youth, especially the minors. Be it a case of a girl’s fake profile, obscene pictures being uploaded or circulated, fake pages , hreatening messages, revenge crimes to even Cyber Bullying which took the major share.

We had sessions with officers from companies like Airtel, PayU, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank who inducted us on various facets of cyber crimes and securities in their domain and told us how they deal with this at their end. In most of the cases when someone is duped and they successfully prove that it wasn’t their fault, the banks are liable to pay them back the amount, so these days banks have their own department to curb this menace. They have highly efficient servers, officers and PR members who try and aware people to not become victims of such crimes.

We had a visit to a police station where we were explained how the moral police officer first takes the complaint and then the FIR is registered, then the officer attaches the required sections of IPC. Also we saw how the police has taken a step forward as they have now started to upload and maintain database of cases they receive on their computer systems.
We then visited the Police Control Room and got a chance to see how the PCRs , the women helplines really work . There were officers who are trained to operate those systems and those really efficient software.

In the process of understanding the crime and investigation techniques, we also started to understand how police is really dedicated and work for people like us. The image of police which I had in my mind has been totally changed after being with them for a month and a half and looking at what they deal with everyday. I saw that with scarce resources, officers solve the cases and put in their best of the efforts. People should know that in how tough situations the police works in 24/7 duty, with no festive holidays, no time for family, not a very high pay scale! They still selflessly serve us. We need to understand that even they are humans and can get frustrated at times.

During one of the training days at the Cyber Cell , a man who worked as a security guard came in with a totally distressed face and told us and the officers how he received a phone call and after that all of his savings account balance was cashed out from an ATM. This is a modus operandi of the criminals. They call a person and pretend as if they are calling from the bank, then ask for their account information as well as the cards information on the pretext of a verification procedure else the account shall be blocked, they ask the CVV number which most people tell. The poor man also did the same. He told the caller all the details and then in an hour he received an alert from the bank stating that all of his balance has been withdrawn from his account.

Looking at that poor man, and a couple of more victims of cyber crime who we came across during this internship, was a bad and miserable experience. With the increase in the usage of internet and mobile phone technology, what users ignore is the security measures with an attitude of Damn! Nothing like that happens. It’s very important to spread the awareness of netiquettes (internet etiquette).

At the end of the internship, 4 projects were awarded the best projects and were given a cash reward and also a commendation letter by the Commissioner of Police, Gurgaon and my project was one of them. After receiving the cash reward I and my friends headed to party and celebrated our journey with the promise to stay connected.

It was the first ever internship of my life and was totally amazing. It helped me evolve as a person and also added a whole new dimension in my career as now I wish to have a career in network securities unlike most of the computer engineers who get into software or applications development, so that i can help curb the cyber crime rate in our country .

Exhilarated by Yashaswini’s internship journey? Apply to these cool cybersecurity internships on Internshala and add a new dimension to your career. 

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