Delhi and Rajasthan have emerged as the two principal centres of cybercrime complaints in North India, together accounting for 61 per cent of all complaints filed on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal since its inception, according to official data that points to a widening structural gap between these two jurisdictions and the rest of the region.
Delhi’s Lead and Rajasthan’s Sharp Rise
The figures cited in the material show that Delhi alone has recorded 5.71 lakh complaints in total, including more than 1.52 lakh in 2024. Rajasthan has reported 4.18 lakh complaints overall and saw a sharp single year jump in 2021, when complaints rose 3.4 times and reached 39,213 from 11,637 in 2020.
The scale of the numbers has placed the two states far ahead of the rest of North India. Haryana, which stands third, has recorded 3.75 lakh complaints and trails Rajasthan by more than 43,000 cases despite being described as a far more urbanised and digitally active state. The report argues that the gap has now become structural rather than incidental, with Delhi and Rajasthan pulling decisively ahead of other states in the region.
Officials and experts cited in the report say the growth in Rajasthan appears linked to the rapid expansion of organised fraud networks, particularly in the Mewat region, along with cheap smartphone penetration and low digital literacy among victims. Together, these factors are described as having turned the state into a major centre of online financial fraud within a short span.
Why Delhi Remains a Prime Target
Delhi has recorded more cybercrime complaints than any other state or Union Territory in North India every year covered by the data. The numbers rose from 38,521 in 2020 to 1,52,874 in 2024, and 2025 had already logged 1,04,276 complaints in just seven months at the time of the report.
Cybersecurity officials said Delhi’s dense population, high UPI transaction volume and concentration of financially active users make it an especially attractive target for scammers. The report suggests that this combination of digital adoption and economic activity has created conditions in which organised online fraud networks can operate at scale.
The data also indicates that 2025 is already on course to surpass the previous year’s record in a matter of months, reinforcing concerns that the growth in complaints is continuing at a pace faster than the state’s response systems may be able to absorb.
Questions Grow Over Enforcement Capacity
The report says the rising complaint numbers raise urgent questions about whether India’s cybercrime response framework, including investigations, prosecutions and convictions, is keeping pace with the scale of the threat. It notes that filing a complaint and getting it formally registered remain separate challenges, and that cybercrime cases across India suffer from low arrest rates, weak conversion into FIRs and limited digital forensics capacity at the state level.
Officials warn that if the current trend continues without a substantial strengthening of enforcement and response systems, the complaint mechanism could risk becoming little more than a large registry of unresolved grievances. The concentration of nearly one million complaints in Delhi and Rajasthan alone has therefore become not just a statistical marker of cybercrime concentration, but also a measure of the pressure being placed on policing, investigative and judicial systems in North India.
About the author – Ayesha Aayat is a law student and contributor covering cybercrime, online frauds, and digital safety concerns. Her writing aims to raise awareness about evolving cyber threats and legal responses.
