Bank clerk Nitu Y had been putting money into an online stock-trading app for about a month before she suspected something was amiss.  

According to the app, she made profits of 9 million rupees (approximately U.S. $102,000) on shares she supposedly had bought. When she tried to cash out those profits, she was told to first pay hundreds of thousands more in commission fees. 

She transferred the sum. But the person she dealt with insisted that the money had not been received. That’s when her banking knowledge, and instincts, kicked in. 

“They told me that RTGS (the real-time gross settlement system between banks) is not a real time process … Then it clicked in my mind that something is fraudulent. Something is wrong,” Nitu said. 

Thanks to her job, she knew to immediately call 1930, India’s national helpline for reporting cybercrime under the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).  

She was also fortunate to live in Nagpur district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.  

Since April, police there have been using MahaCrimeOS AI, a customized crime investigation platform powered by Microsoft Foundry that helps them process complaints faster and navigate complex data and procedures — all crucial functions for handling cybercrime. 

On Dec. 12, 2025, the government of Maharashtra and Microsoft announced that MahaCrimeOS AI will be extended from Nagpur’s 23 police stations to all 1,100 police stations across the state.  

“Ethical and responsible AI for public good is our core motto,” said Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. “AI has the power to transform by improving efficiency, enhancing quality of life and delivering true ease of living for every citizen.” 

The state even created a special purpose vehicle to introduce AI solutions in law enforcement. It is known by the acronym MARVEL, which stands for Maharashtra Advanced Research and Vigilance for Enforcement of Reformed Laws.” The vision behind creating MARVEL is to build a platform that partners with global deep-technology leaders to develop AI copilots that can fundamentally transform the way we govern,” said Fadnavis. 

Amid a surge in recent years of investing scams, refund frauds and digital arrests, Nitu’s case is just one of the millions of cybercrime complaints lodged in India. According to I4C data cited in a parliamentary reply on Dec. 2, 2025, nearly 2.27 million cybercrime cases were reported in 2024 alone. More than 228 billion rupees (US $2.5 billion) were lost to cyber criminals that year. I4C is the national agency set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs to create a framework for preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting cybercrime in India. 

With most investigators not well-versed in tech, having an AI-powered digital assistant on hand has eased their workload. 

In Nitu’s case, lodging her criminal complaint – known as a first information report or FIR – took just 15 minutes at the Saoner police station in Nagpur.  

She supplied the scam site’s social media account and URL, mobile numbers, screenshots of her text messages and bank statements. All this information, be it on a PDF file or a handwritten note in English, Hindi or local language Marathi, can be uploaded, extracted and filed in their respective sections by MahaCrimeOS AI in minutes, freeing an investigator from tedious manual work to create a case file. 

Assistant Police Inspector Ashish Singh Thakur, who handled Nitu’s case, said that before it would have taken two to three months to gather information for the investigation. 

“We have to go to multiple banks because the funds were transferred across more than 40 to 50 different banks … We have to write them a letter and take a statement from them. Then, there were multiple mobile numbers used … I have to get the IP addresses. Lots of manual work,” he explained. 

Instead, it took Thakur about a week to complete these tasks and hear back from these service providers.  

“With a few clicks I can request the call detail records of multiple numbers. I don’t have to draft the letters; they’ve been drafted by MahaCrimeOS AI. And I don’t have to worry about missing out information or making mistakes in my letters, and having to start all over again,” he said.  

He can now handle seven to eight cases a month, compared with just one previously. 

Tools to aid law enforcement 

Automating these frontline processes was just one part of the challenge, said Ram Ganesh, founder and CEO of CyberEye, the independent software vendor (ISV) that built the engine powering MahaCrimeOS AI. The company worked with MARVEL to customize it for Maharashtra police. 

CyberEye is a Microsoft Partner ISV and works closely with the Microsoft India Development Center. 

“Our first challenge was there was very minimal standardization,” he said.  

This ranged from using varying terms in reports to describe the same financial fraud or criminal method, to not having standard legal notices seeking information from banks.   

This made it harder for the police to decide on next steps, discover if cases were linked or build up legacy knowledge.  

CyberEye worked with MARVEL to incorporate the Maharashtra police’s investigation protocols and make the platform available in Marathi, for ease of use by investigators. 

They then added AI, in the form of an investigation copilot that analyses the case information, generates an automated workflow and suggests investigation pathways. The copilot was built using Azure OpenAI Service in Microsoft Foundry and secured with Defender for Cloud. 

The platform also has built-in access to India’s criminal laws and open-source intelligence, which can be used to link crimes and locate suspects.  

A key advantage of the platform is its ability to adapt existing best-practice protocols, add a level of knowledge specific to a crime and then develop tailored investigation plans, said Harssh A Poddar, superintendent of police, Nagpur Rural, and CEO of MARVEL. 

“Now you have a copilot that is able to do that work taking on board knowledge resources that exist within the Maharashtra police,” he said. 

The system also frees officers to focus more on crime-solving and victim assistance, by replicating and automating administrative tasks they do in a typical day. 

When an investigator logs on to MahaCrimeOS AI, they can view all the cases they are working on, whether there is new information on it or action to be taken. 

In a financial fraud case, such actions include asking a bank to freeze an account, requesting a phone number be blocked or that a social media account be taken down.  

Meanwhile, if call detail records have arrived from a telecommunications company, they can ask Investigation copilot how to proceed. Or they can click on its suggestion to analyze the records or gather open-source intelligence on a phone number.  

These features enable officers to develop a very individualized investigation plan for every single cybercrime, said Poddar.  

How MahaCrimeOS AI works

“One of the main advantages has been the speed of investigation,” he said. “The second is the assurance that the investigation is meeting the highest standards set by the Maharashtra police. And the third is enabling the capacity of the investigation officer to explain to the survivor the steps that they are taking.”  

The platform has also fostered self-confidence and autonomy among officers handling cybercrimes. 

According to Poddar, some investigators “almost froze” when faced with cybercrime cases before and waited for more senior colleagues to give them detailed instructions. Now they are more confident. 

“Now they have a digital companion … It certainly builds a lot of professional capability, which in turn serves as a midwife for more self-confidence and much better decision making for officers at all levels,” he said. 

Assistant Investigator Sangita Gawande has been working in cybercrimes for the past seven years with Nagpur Rural police. When she first started, she saw two or three cases a month. Now, in the past two years, she has seen about 200 cases monthly. 

Her key challenge used to be staying on top of her administrative workload. Now, she’s more self-assured. 

“Before, I wouldn’t have the time to get to certain cases,” she said. “And I wouldn’t be able to provide answers if my boss asked about them. Now I’m confident and less stressed because I can complete my reports quicker and have time to look at each case.”. 

A continuous effort to fight cybercrime 

A digital assistant like MahaCrimeOS AI adds to India’s efforts to fight cybercrime. The federal government has implemented measures like the 1930 hotline, National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and special units within state police departments called Cyber Cells, all coordinated by I4C. 

The platform has also set an example for how AI can be used more widely. 

“Our collaboration with Microsoft began with solving complex cybercrime challenges, but its potential is far greater,” said Chief Minister Fadnavis. “AI today touches every sphere of human activity, from health care and agriculture to industry and governance and we intend to harness this power responsibly to create a more effective, citizen-centric state.” 

For bank clerk Nitu, her ordeal continues, but she remains grateful to Nagpur police.   

In total, she had transferred more than 3 million rupees (about U.S. $34,000) to the fake app between March and April. So far, police have recovered about 800,000 rupees (approximately U.S. $9,000) of that from frozen bank accounts across the country. 

“The support is more important than me getting my money back, because it has been six months,” she said. “The intensity of my financial loss has been fading day by day, but the support from the police will never fade.” 

Top image: For assistant investigator Sangita Gawande (middle) and her fellow officers at Nagpur Rural, having MahaCrimeOS AI as a digital companion has boosted their confidence in dealing with cybercrime. Photo by Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Microsoft.

*The data depicted in the photo gallery is entirely fictional and is provided solely for illustrative purposes.