LUCKNOW In one of UP Police’s biggest coordinated offensives against cyber crime, the weeklong Operation Cy-Vajra has exposed the scale, sophistication and financial architecture of organised online fraud with investigators tracing cyber fraud worth ₹1,158.70 crore, arresting 773 accused and dismantling infrastructure that enabled digital scams across the country.
Event Context
The statewide special drive, conducted from July 7 to 13, was launched by the cyber crime headquarters following intelligence reports on cyber criminal networks. The operation was initiated after director general of police Rajeev Krishna directed all police commissionerates and district police units to carry out intelligence-based action against organised cyber crime in line with chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s directions.
“Rather than merely focusing on arrests, the operation targeted the entire ecosystem that sustains cyber fraud—from mule bank accounts and illegal call centres to SIM box operators and unauthorised SIM vendors,” the DGP emphasised. He said the most striking revelation of the campaign is the discovery that complaints linked to the arrested or detained cyber criminals on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) involve cyber fraud amounting to nearly ₹1,158.70 crore.
The figure underlines the enormous economic impact of organised cyber crime and indicates that a relatively small number of syndicates may have been responsible for financial fraud running into thousands of crores across multiple states, he explained.
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“According to police data, the arrested accused were found linked with 7,989 complaints registered on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal,” D-G (cyber crime) Binod Kumar Singh said while sharing details, adding, “During the operation, police also registered 865 fresh FIRs against the suspects while identifying their involvement in 196 previously registered FIRs across the country. Significantly, 23 new FIRs relate specifically to cyber crimes targeting women and children, highlighting the growing use of digital platforms for exploitation of vulnerable victims.”
He said the campaign also witnessed extensive preventive action. “Police arrested 773 cyber criminals, while 673 other suspects were detained or bound down under the provisions of Section 35(3) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) to prevent further criminal activities. Beyond individual offenders, investigators focused on dismantling the infrastructure that enables cyber fraud,” the D-G added.
He said the police initiated action against 3,866 mule bank accounts, which are routinely used by fraudsters to receive and quickly transfer illegally obtained money. Such accounts are often opened in the names of unsuspecting individuals or recruited account holders and form the financial backbone of online fraud operations.
The D-G further said the operation also led to action against 17 illegal call centres, five SIM box installations used for masking the origin of international calls and 11 illegal point of sale (PoS) SIM vendors allegedly supplying SIM cards used in cyber crimes. By targeting these support systems, investigators attempted to disrupt organised cyber networks rather than merely arresting individual operators.
During searches and raids, police seized ₹53.35 lakh in cash, 911 mobile phones, 75 laptops and desktop computers, 1,270 SIM cards, 648 debit and credit cards and 110 electronic devices, including pen drives, routers and CPUs. Authorities also recovered online gaming clusters worth nearly ₹37 lakh, indicating that digital gaming platforms may have been used either for laundering proceeds of crime or facilitating illegal financial transactions.
The seizure of more than 1,200 SIM cards and 648 banking cards suggests that the accused were operating multiple fake identities and financial channels simultaneously. Similarly, the recovery of hundreds of mobile phones points towards large-scale operations involving phishing, impersonation, digital arrest scams, investment frauds and OTP-based financial crimes.
The campaign also demonstrates a strategic shift in UP Police’s cyber crime response. Instead of treating cyber offences as isolated incidents, investigators adopted an intelligence-driven model aimed at identifying organised criminal networks, mapping their financial ecosystem and dismantling their operational infrastructure.
