e-Zero FIR System: Delhi Records Highest Cyber Fraud Cases Among 18 States/UTs

Political and Constitutional Dimensions "Police" and "Public Order" fall under Entries 1 and 2 of the State List (List II, Seventh Schedule), making state governments the primary enforcement authority for FIR registration even for cybercrime. The Centre's role, through MHA's I4C, is coordinative and technological rather than constitutionally executive — it builds shared digital infrastructure but relies on states to operationalise e-Crime Police Stations, explaining the uneven 18-state adoption rather than a uniform nationwide rollout.

Economic and Financial Dimensions Cyber financial fraud represents a growing drain on household savings and digital-payment trust; faster FIR registration through e-Zero FIR is intended to improve fund-freezing response times for victims, since delayed reporting typically allows fraudsters to withdraw or launder stolen funds before banks can act.

Social Dimensions Delhi and Chandigarh's disproportionately high case numbers compared to other adopting states may reflect both greater digital-payment penetration and better public awareness of the reporting mechanism, rather than necessarily higher fraud incidence — a distinction relevant to policy interpretation of the data.

Governance and Administrative Dimensions The requirement for complainants to physically visit a police station within 3 days to convert the e-Zero FIR into a regular FIR reflects a hybrid model — combining digital-first reporting with traditional procedural safeguards under the Code of Criminal Procedure/Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita framework for regular FIR registration.

International Perspective Cyber financial fraud is a global law-enforcement challenge, and India's I4C-led coordination model — centralising a national reporting portal while depending on state-level enforcement — offers a federalism-compatible template that other large federal democracies grappling with cross-border and cross-state cyber fraud could study.