Around 20k foreign nationals staying illegally in Coimbatore, Tirupur, says Madras HC judge

COIMBATORE: Pointing out that 46,000 foreign nationals were overstaying in Tamil Nadu, Madras high court judge Justice M Dhandapani on Saturday said at least 20,000 of them were illegally staying in Coimbatore and Tirupur districts. While most of them were from the African continent, Bangladesh and Myanmar, a few from Pakistan were also illegally staying in India after the expiry of their visas, he said.

Talking to TOI after addressing a district-level awareness programme on gender sensitization and elimination of violence against women, Dhandapani said, "Many foreign-based websites are involved in the cyberattack using the dark web. The Child Sexual Abuse Material is another cyber threat. While this being the case, more than 46,000 foreign nationals are illegally residing in India. This calls for close monitoring. Any security lapse could lead to a crisis."

Pointing out that criminals were digitally equipped, he said so should be the law enforcers. "This calls for a change in the recruitment policy. The govt should hire technically skilled people. Training should also be imparted to the existing law enforcers to tackle such dark web crimes."

Addressing the programme that was held at PSG Hospitals, V Balakrishnan, inspector general of police (administration), Chennai, said the crimes relating to the dark web, be it money laundering, bullying, morphing and deepfake abuse, were a real challenge and would take much longer to solve than conventional crimes. "The main problem is that they maintain anonymity on the internet."

He said the current system lacked a proper cyber protocol and the existing data of the govt was vulnerable to be hacked. "This is a major threat to the judiciary system as well. Maintaining the confidentiality of the victims, petitioners and their associates in a sexual harassment case is also at risk."

The event saw participation of judges, advocates, police officials, doctors and others.