The Delhi Police recently dismantled one of the largest cybercrime rackets in India’s history. The operation, codenamed ‘Cyber Hawk’, was an aggressive 48-hour operation, spread across multiple cities to expose a long-running cyber cartel of hundreds of cybercriminals.
According to officials, the crackdown involved coordinated raids, large-scale data seizure and the detention of 700 cybercriminals, signalling a decisive blow to organised online fraud networks.
Investigators revealed that the cyber cartel used to run a multilayered fraud ecosystem, which involved fake call centres, phishing networks, mule accounts and forged digital documents. Police have admitted that the gang had been active for months and had already defrauded thousands of victims nationwide.
Delhi Police has confirmed that they have officially launched Operation Cyber Hawk, a multi-agency coordinated strike targeting active cybercrime hotspots across Delhi and neighbouring regions. The task force raided dozens of premises, seized digital devices, and froze fraudulent bank accounts linked to a Rs. 1,000 crore money trail.
According to official reports, they have captured more than 700 cybercriminals with online investment scams, customer care impersonation frauds, UPI thefts, and data-harvesting operations. Many of the seized devices contained logs of phishing messages, VoIP call scripts, and transaction trails proving the gang’s involvement in sophisticated digital fraud.
Though unidentified, police believe that the syndicate was part of a larger nationwide racket with connections to organised criminal networks. They have seized hundreds of SIM cards, forged Aadhaar documents, spoofed helplines, and VoIP servers used to mask call origins.
Preliminary investigation has revealed that the cartel used fake customer support lines, phishing websites, loan app scams, credit-limit frauds, sextortion modules, and cryptocurrency channels to target victims.
The most alarming strategy of the racket involved impersonating banks, courier companies, and tech-support services. They used to call victims through spoofed numbers and extract sensitive data or money.
The fraudulently obtained funds were used to move to mule accounts, then to shell companies and crypto wallets. Afterwards it was shifted to decentralized channels. Police groups have succeeded in freezing about 20% of the complete money trail, which has stopped the loss from getting bigger.
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The breakthrough of such a massive criminal racket has raised a question: Is India ready to dismantle the growing criminal syndicates? With cybercriminals evolving rapidly and exploiting loopholes in digital literacy, law enforcement agencies face the challenge of balancing technological advancement with security.
Operation Cyber Hawk has certainly been a big move towards the eradication of cyberfraud, but experts believe that India needs more robust digital surveillance systems, stringent SIM-registration rules, and quicker fraud-response mechanisms to ensure that such incidents do not happen in the future.