Is Coimbatore becoming the crime-capital for IT?

In IT business, the city has got much reputation as the IT products move to RoTN (Rest of Tamil Nadu) from the city and even the vendors are very keen on tie ups with the channel partners in that region. However, on the dark side, the number of IT-related crime in the region has predominantly increasing in the city. Some of the sour incidents happened in the shops of many channel partners in the recent days are shocking for everyone.

Incident-1

A person comes on the pretext of a customer enters the office of a channel partners, furnishes a demand-draft (DD) of a private bank for Rs.27, 000/- and purchases a mobile and a laptop. The channel partner did not had any uncertainty as the DD was ‘prepared' in a way with all the essential elements like date, bank logo and even the stickers were pasted in the right way. So, the partner sold the product for that fake DD. Simultaneously, another channel partner from the same city receives a DD for Rs.50,000/-, supposedly from the same person. However, having a spark of suspicion, the partner does the cross-verification of the DD with the nearest branch of the same bank where the DD is shown. After getting confirmation from the bank that the DD was fake, the channel partner, with the help of police and the bank manager tries to catch him, however the person flew away.

Incident-2

A class 12 student has entered a shop of a channel partner in Coimbatore with a school- bag and looted a 10 inch net-book. However, the channel partner, through his local sources, comes to know that the laptop has moved to four hands and at last recovered the stolen one from a government office employee.

Other crime incidents:

In the recent days, there has been large number of tech-savvy criminal activities increasing in Coimbatore and nearby regions including fradulent online-trading. Gossips are also there that the free laptops distributed by the Government of Tamil Nadu is largely sold in the IT market and the laptops are sold from Rs.5000/- to Rs.7000/- and the interesting aspect is even the distribution of the back-end products happens having Coimbatore as the headquarters.

CITA answers:

Speaking to ‘The DQ Week', K Mohan, president, Coimbatore Information Technology Association (CITA), said, "Proper complaints have been lodged on the two incidents. With the help of the police officials, CITA members and friends from the Erode association, we are trying to sort out this issue and soon we are likely to get remedy." "Apart from that our association will discuss this issue in the forthcoming meetings and we are planning to have hoardings pasted in the doors of the shops creating awareness", he further added. Mohan also suggested having a strong view on the counter section and to have proper CCTV installations which could detect the faces of the customers."