National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India has signed an MoU with National Law University(NLU) , Delhi and National Law Institute University (NLIU), Bhopal, to establish a Cyber Lab for the ‘Online Capacity Building Programme on Cyber Law, Crime Investigation and Digital Forensics’ here today.

The MoU was signed by Shri Abhishek Singh, President & Chief Executive Officer, NeGD on behalf of NeGD, Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao on behalf of NLU, Delhi and Prof. (Dr.) V. Vijayakumar on behalf of NLIU, Bhopal. Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics & IT and senior officials of the Ministry also attended the event.

Addressing the event, Shri Ajay Prakash Sawhney said that this program is expected to receive a very enthusiastic response from wide spectrum across law enforcement including the senior officers in Law Enforcement Agencies and also from Judiciary. Being an online program, it has potential of immense scalability. With regards to expanding and strengthening of the program, Shri Sawhney said that other law schools will also be engaged in hub and spoke design of forensic labs.

The goal of this programme is to enable Police Officers, State Cyber Cells, Law Enforcement Agencies, Prosecutors and Judicial Officers to acquire requisite skills to deal with Cyber Forensics cases efficiently & effectively as per the Indian Cyber Law while adopting global best practices, standards and guidelines. NeGD, in collaboration with NLIU Bhopal has taken this initiative to offer a 9 Months Online PG Diploma to 1000 Officials through its Learning Management System (LMS). The programme enables learners to experience anytime anywhere learning on the go. The first batch started in November 2020 with a total of 579 participants approved for the course.

One of the outcomes of the programme is that each enrolled participant will undergo practical training session and personal contact program at the designated Cyber Lab to be set up in the campus of the National Law University (NLU) Delhi for facilitating this course. The proposed cyber lab will be equipped with Hybrid architecture which supports both virtual as well as physical mode of capacity building in the areas of Cyber Law, Cybercrime Investigation and Digital Forensics. The lab will have a training room capacity of 25 Users and remote connectivity for 25 Users each, at a given time augmented with AR/VR features. Other law schools/ universities like National Law School of India University (Bangalore), Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law (Patiala), etc., will be on-boarded in hub and spoke model for future endeavors. The law schools will provide the necessary faculty members, expertise and content for the virtual classes. The National e-Governance Division (NeGD) will develop the e-content based on the support received from faculty members.  NLIU, BHOPAL being the lead academic partner for the course will award the PG Diploma Certificate to the participants who successfully complete the course.

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RKJ/M