New Delhi, Feb 10 (IANS): To strengthen the mechanism to deal with cyber crimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) was set to provide a framework and eco-system to deal with cyber crimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner, the Parliament was told on Wednesday.

Minister for State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, said that steps have been taken for spreading awareness about cyber crimes, issuance of alerts/advisories, capacity building, training of law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judicial officers; and improving cyber forensic facilities.

"The government has launched the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (www.cybercrime.gov.in), to enable the public to report incidents pertaining to all types of cyber crimes, with a special focus on cyber crimes against women and children," he said.

Cyber crime incidents reported on this portal are routed automatically to the respective state/Union Territory law enforcement agency for further handling as per the provisions of the law while a toll-free helpline number has been operationalized to get assistance in lodging online cyber complaints

Noting that the 'Police' and 'Public Order' are state subjects as per the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, he said that the states/UTs are primarily responsible to maintain law and order, inter-alia including strategy to prevent cyber crimes, planning and setting up of task force, and capacity building/training of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) for prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of cyber crimes, and the Centre supplements their initiatives through various advisories and schemes for the capacity-building of their LEAs.