Call Meeting Of All Cyber Crime Cells For Coordination In Dealing With Fraudulent Transaction Cases: Delhi High Court To MHA

The Delhi High Court has directed the concerned Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs ("MHA") to call a meeting of Cyber Crime Cells in various states to ensure coordination while dealing with cases involving fraudulent transactions.

Justice Prathiba M Singh said that there needs to be some coordination between Cyber Crime Cells of all police authorities in the country and ordered that the meeting be held on December 20.

“Let a meeting be called by the concerned Joint Secretary, MHA of all the Cyber Crime Cells in various states in order to have some coordination between them for dealing with such fraudulent transaction cases. Let the said meeting be held by 20th December, 2023 at 3:00 pm”.

Justice Singh was dealing with a batch of petitions concerning proliferation of fraudulent domain names, filed by trademark and brand owners seeking reliefs against misuse of their marks and names by unauthorized persons, who register such marks as part of their domain names. The pleas also raised the issue of fraudulent transactions resulting in innocent customers being duped.

Delhi Government’s counsel told the court that in a number of cases, banks do not answer queries raised by the police for ensuring compliance of judicial orders.

Justice Singh directed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to file an affidavit stating as to whether any guidelines have been issued by it to banks in respect of queries raised by the police and for ensuring compliance of orders passed by police authorities or courts.

“It is made clear that whenever any information is requested by the Cyber Crime Cells of police authorities, banks ought to respond to the same in a diligent manner,” the court added.

The matter will now be heard on February 01, 2024.

Earlier, the court had observed that RBI needs to take steps to curb malpractices where amounts have been accepted by banks in the names of well-known companies but the bank account stands in the name of third party.

It had asked the counsel appearing for RBI to seek instructions as to whether the regulatory authority can issue guidelines making it mandatory for banks to match beneficiary’s name or name in the billing details with the account holder’s name “and not merely the account number” whenever banks accept online or offline payments.

Case Title: Dabur India Limited v. Ashok Kumar and Ors, CS(COMM) 135/2022 (and other connected matters) 

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 1181

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