Setting up of e-courts suggested

Supreme court judge justice V S Sirpurkar on Sunday suggested setting up of E-Courts to speed up the trial and conviction in cyber crimes.
    
The specialised e-courts exclusively to deal with IT related crimes should be manned by trained judges, justice Sirpurkar said after inaugurating a national seminar on 'Cyber Crimes, Cyber Laws and Cyber Security' organised by Centre for Development of Imaging Technology, here.
    
Sirpurkar also wanted a time limit by which a case has to be heard, completed and sentence passed.
    
Underscoring the significance of computer education to all connected with investigating agencies, judiciary and prosecuting agency, he said all these people should also update their knowledge on the new developments in technology to effectively deal with cyber crimes.
    
Taking exception to the discrimination of crime between 'white collar and black collar', he said 'a crime is a crime whether carried out by an educated person or illiterate'.
    
Punishment to a crime carried out by an educated person must be severe, as he or she had done it after knowing the law, he added.

N R Madhava Menon, member, Committee on Centre-State Relations and chairman of Law Academy, Bangalore, wanted the cyber law to be part of the school curriculum in the country. Even established legal practitioners were not comfortable with litigation on cyber subject, he said.
    
There was a 50 per cent jump in cyber crimes in 2007 as compared to the previous year and very few cyber criminals could be brought to justice under IT Act. According to rough estimates, over 50 per cent of India's 1.3 billion people were now connected to internet and it was growing fast, he said.
    
The legal system should therefore develop appropriate deterrent mechanisms to neutralise the efficiency advantages offered to criminals in the use of computers and Internet. While imparting computer lessons, it was necessary to educate people of the consequences of abuse of technology so that their on-line conduct will remain law abiding, he said.
    
Referring to different strategies to combat cyber crimes, he said private parties such as Internet-service providers should be put into use for investigations. For every computer crime, fine should be exemplary to make it economically an unviable option to the offender.
   
Director, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, Gulshan Rai, C-DIT director and Information and Public Relations secretary Sheela Thomas were among those who spoke on the occasion.