Bengaluru: People in Karnataka have lost Rs 558 crore to cyberfraud between Jan and July this year, but only Rs 1.9 crore of the money has been returned to victims, according to data from the home department.While Rs 35.9 crore has been frozen in connection with these cases, the amount returned to victims is barely 5% of the money frozen and less than 0.4% of the total amount lost.The recovery challenge comes as the state’s cybercrime police machinery faces vacancies. The manpower data shows 320 unfilled positions, including 200 vacancies at the cybercrime police station at Bengaluru commissioner’s office.The scale of losses is striking even against the much higher number of cases recorded in the previous two years. Karnataka reported 17,890 cybercrime cases involving Rs 1,841 crore in 2024. Of this, Rs 257.8 crore was frozen and Rs 183.6 crore returned to victims. In 2025, 10,703 cases involved Rs 1,756.6 crore, with Rs 158.5 crore frozen and Rs 76.7 crore returned.While the number of cases reported this year is less than half that of 2024 and less than half that of 2025, the average amount lost per case has remained high. It works out to about Rs 11.8 lakh per case this year, compared with Rs 10.3 lakh in 2024 and Rs 16.4 lakh in 2025.Home minister Priyank Kharge recently told the legislature that Karnataka was seeking to strengthen the way cybercrime cases are handled by improving coordination between cybercrime units, police departments, banks, financial institutions and other govt agencies.Kharge said the coordination was intended to ensure investigators could obtain documents and other information required for investigations from financial institutions and other agencies without delay. Once investigations are completed, necessary steps would be taken to recover or release the money in accordance with legal procedure.He said pending cases would be reviewed, with the reasons for delays examined and directions issued for their disposal. Long-pending cases would be given priority, with periodic reviews of their progress, he said.The figures point to a widening gap between the scale of cybercrime losses and the money reaching victims. Of the Rs 3,932 crore lost to cyber fraud across 2024, 2025 and 2026 so far, about Rs 262 crore has been returned, according to the official figures.
