Kerala Cyber Police traced a Missing Person

The Kerala State Cyber Police have successfully tracked a missing person solely with the help of Internet. A 33-year-old man, who was missing for the past 12 years, has been traced by Kerala Cyber Police after tracking his activities on an Internet social networking Site. This was the first case in the country where a missing person was tracked down with the help of Internet.

The Cyber Police, Thiruvananthapuram, which tracked down Jimmy Koruth, a then final-year degree student from Pandalam who went missing since November 1998. A man missing case was registered at the Pandalam Police Station. In January 2010, one of Jimmy’s relatives came across an Orkut profile named after Jimmy. The information was passed on to the Pandalam police immediately, which, in turn, handed over the case to the Cyber Cell.

The Cyber Cell contacted Google International in the US for tracking Jimmy’s email details and found out that the profile was created at a cyber cafe in Chennai in October 2008. The police obtained Jimmy’s address from the identity proof he had given in the cyber cafe. His father V.V.Koruth identified him from the images recorded by the security camera at the cafe.

Cyber crimes have been steadily on the rise in Kerala and the numbers may cross 50,000 this year (2010) said by Mr. Jacob Punnoose IPS, Kerala DGP recently.