Offence of Stalking against women under IT Act 2000 as amended with special Reference to Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

The current research investigates the prevailing scenario of cybercrime with special reference newlineto cyber stalking against women in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Also, focuses upon IT act newline2000 with reference to provisions, acts, penalties and punishment for various types of newlinecybercrime. The study broadly includes women as primary respondents in which different newlinecategories have been considered like- school going girls, working women, self-employed newlinewomen etc. Descriptive research method has been adopted which helped in conducting two newlinedimensional investigation including qualitative and quantitative research. The study is based newlineupon 6 objectives which broadly covers all possible dimensions of cyber stalking against newlinewomen in Madhya Pradesh. Primary data has been collected from respondents using selfstructured newlinequestionnaire. Total 137 responses have been finally used for the analysis and newlinehypotheses testing. With the help of authorized published statistics on cybercrime/stalking, newlinestatistical tools like- ANOVA, T-test, factor analysis, graphs etc. analysis has been conducted. newlineThe study found that, Madhya Pradesh rank 15th place for cybercrime much behind from big newlinestates like UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka etc. whereas, Sikkim is found to be last in cybercrime. newlineThe governments are being proactive to monitor and control cybercrime activities across the newlinexvii newlinestate, hence, taken up various initiatives like- regular website auditing, crisis management newlineplan, mock drills, establishment of CERT and so on. Amongst the various initiatives, four newlinemost efficient cybercrime prevention initiatives are identified as- establishment of cybercrime newlinecell, cybercrime investigation program, police training programs and women helpline. The newlinestudy also found potential laws and acts which are seriously workable to deal with cyber newlinestalking, which are- section 354D, section 499, section 354A, section 354C, section 503, newlinesection 57, section 509 etc. Along with these sections, the study has found potential penalties newlineand punishment which seems to be very reasonable with respect to type of newlinecybercrime/stalking. It has been observed that, cybercrime/stalking against women has newlinesignificantly increased during the last few years due to rapid development of technology, tech newlineaffordability and growing use of internet in day to day activities. Some specific crime/stalking newlineare identified as- cyber blackmailing, cyber pornography, publishing obscene sexual newlinematerials, defamation, fake profiling etc. At last, the study concluded that, newlinecybercrime/stalking is a fastest emerging challenge before the government and crime related newlineto it needs to be taken care efficiently to retain users trust on e-transactions. Also, it is very newlinecrucial for socio-economic development of the nation. newline