LAHORE — Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi has pledged to strengthen the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA), saying its thin staffing in Punjab has left investigators buried under thousands of cases each, including sensitive complaints that need action within hours, not months.
Speaking to the media in Lahore on Friday, Naqvi revealed that the agency has only 61 personnel across Punjab, a province of around 140 million people. He said a single investigating officer carries 3,000 to 4,000 cases, on top of attending court hearings, hearing complainants, preparing challans and conducting investigations — a workload he said no officer can possibly manage.
“If this is the situation in Lahore, the situation in Multan and other areas is much worse,” he said, adding that he would raise the staffing and resource shortages with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the coming days.
The government, he said, plans to increase the agency’s personnel and resources, open more offices and establish dedicated police stations. Arrangements for setting up NCCIA police stations across the country are expected to be finalised within 10 to 15 days, he added.
Naqvi stressed that some complaints cannot wait, particularly cases involving the online harassment and blackmail of women and girls. In such sensitive cases, he said, officers must respond within hours. He recalled meetings with women who had attempted suicide after facing harassment, describing their experiences as a stark reminder of why a faster and more effective response is needed.
The minister’s remarks come against the background of a separate restructuring proposal for the agency. Reports on 30 September said a plan to rename the NCCIA as “Cyber Police” and run it under a hybrid model alongside the police department had been sent to the Interior Ministry. That proposal includes a cyber police station in every district, headed by a station house officer instead of a deputy director, with officers of SP and DSP rank in larger districts and a DSP-rank officer supervising stations in smaller districts. In Lahore, a station in each police division, supervised by one SSP and two SPs, has been proposed, and existing NCCIA buildings could be converted into cyber police stations.
Crucially, that restructuring plan is still a proposal: the final decision rests with the Interior Ministry, and it has not yet been approved. It should not be read as a done decision to open a station in every district.
The NCCIA’s workload has been in the spotlight recently. Earlier this month, the agency’s Lahore wing arrested the prime suspect in an alleged Rs35 billion fake American postage stamp scam, a case that showed the scale of online fraud now landing on cybercrime investigators.
A video discussing the NCCIA expansion reports was also shared on Nishandahi Media’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2549810532189549/
