Last night was interesting. I had finished supper and was preparing to sleep when I got a call. The call was from my office, and they wanted me to cover something the Bihar police had just unearthed. I do not know about other countries but here in India, a few independent witnesses are required when police raid a house, and as it was an armed raid, my office thought I should cover it. So I went, and here is the story.

The Patna police had got a tip off that one of India's most wanted criminal may be in the city, and they had conducted an armed raid on a house in a middle class neighborhood on the eastern side. The criminal they were searching for was a well known gangster from the holy city of Varanasi, Vishwas "Nepali", who had a huge bounty on his head and had been on the run for a decade or more.

He was wanted for multiple murders, but had managed to elude the law thus far because he had been taking advantage of the porous borders between India and Nepal so that every time the cops got near him, he would manage to cross the border and evade arrest. But where ever his base might have been, he had managed to create the largest network of criminals which were running an extortion racket in the three cities of Lucknow, Varanasi and Patna. And it was said that he made use of modern communication technology to organise and run his gang, but no one knew the extent till yesterday's raid.

The Patna police had received communication from their counterparts in the state of Uttar Pradesh that Vishwas may be visiting Patna on a specific day, and had prepared themselves to nab him. They had specific information about a house in a middle class locality, Ram Nagar, on the eastern fringes of the city. The place had come up in the last decade and was already a bustling community with a few high rises, but mostly small one storey houses with walls around them. One such house was earmarked and plain clothes policemen were keeping an eye on it.

But last night around 9 pm, the police got their call and had organised an armed party to apprehend the criminal. The gangsters were known to be heavily armed and the police were taking no chances and were armed to the teeth themselves. A raid was conducted and they smashed their way into the house, in which they apprehended four individuals, and unfortunately, none of whom was the dreaded gangster, who seemed to have evaded the net yet again. The residents had given up easily, and had not retaliated after just two warning shots fired by the police despite the fact a huge cache of arms and ammunition were found in the house later. Weapons enough to arm a small army!
<center>![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmPXZkrBg75pjVjS9ehbgHnd4UBpbu8MvAQRws6xBUbpEz/image.png)</center> [[Photo]](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141001193003-152360640-history-of-cyber-crime)
When I reached there almost at midnight, there already were two witnesses for the police who were preparing to take an inventory of the house. As a reporter I was allowed into the house where a police team was going through every item found in the house and recording them. One room was found to be full of guns and bullets. In fact they found around 25 firearms, among which was a rifle only issued to members of the armed forces in India and a message had been sent to the local military camp for an expert to come and have a look. 

The police chief was looking for me when I arrived, and took me to another room in the house which was the shock. It was a room full of electronics and computers and everyone was stunned to slowly realise that these criminals were more tech savvy then they were given credit for. Because in that room were electronics which was also used by the police to track down criminals, and they had no idea that it was being used against them as well, and they realised that they were facing a sophisticated gang who not only had the knowledge, but also the manpower to use modern technology to aid them in their enterprise.

The room in question had around 100 SIM cards of phones from around four operators and around a dozen phones by different manufacturers. It also had a desktop computer and a laptop all connected to the internet through a small wifi device, of which they had two, from different operators. But the biggest surprise was the scanners. These criminals were so sophisticated that they had equipment which would let them eavesdrop on mobile phone communications. In fact the police had found a recording made by them which had been recorded of one of their extortion target, a business man in Varanasi, who had refused to pay and had been shot dead in broad daylight just last year! 

Having reported on crime for more than a decade now, I do come across a lot of violence and murders, as part of my job reporting it. But this was new and unexpected and got me thinking. How is it that these uneducated gangsters manage these things? I use a computer like everyone else does, but that does not make me an expert. But the fact that these devices were around the house pointed to the fact that some experts must have set it up and trained them to use it. This would mean that any criminal enterprise which can afford it can buy any technology, and get their men trained to use it, and it is not only the police and law enforcement.

As a crime journalist I have covered a few stories in my time, but this one was different. This one told me even small time criminals in India are getting more sophisticated. And if they can afford it, these equipment which is otherwise banned in India, can be bought easily as almost everything seemed to be made in China, and the construction of these devices seems robust. I may be wrong, but if this is what is happening in the small time criminal space in the country, I expect we will see these criminals change tactics and our society will be faced with a new type of crime soon: Tech crime.

Thank you.