Kolkata, Nov. 1 -- The Bengal government is planning to strengthen its fight against tax evasion and financial fraud by upgrading the Directorate of Commercial Taxes' Cyber Forensic Laboratory with advanced digital investigation equipment and specialised software.
Sources said Webel Technology Limited, a state government undertaking, has floated a tender to supply and install new hardware and software at the laboratory. The initiative aims to help tax authorities detect increasingly sophisticated methods of financial fraud, including suppression of sales figures and fabrication of invoices to claim fraudulent tax deductions.
An official said that businesses can now manipulate electronic transaction records using specialised software, deleting individual sales entries or reducing recorded amounts without leaving obvious traces. With most financial records maintained digitally, conventional methods of investigation can be time-consuming.
The proposed upgrade includes a high-performance digital forensic workstation with 200 terabytes of storage, along with specialised tools to examine computer disks, mobile devices, cloud-based records and digital video recordings.
The procurement also includes software for recovering mobile phone passcodes, extracting digital information and examining deleted, encrypted and password-protected files.
The government has also proposed renewing licences for two existing digital investigation tools- Oxygen Forensic Detective, used to retrieve and examine data from mobile phones, and EnCase Forensic, which helps investigators collect and analyse digital evidence from computers and storage devices.
The initiative envisages equipping investigators to retrieve digital evidence while preserving its integrity, an important requirement when such material is used in legal proceedings, the official said.
The selected agency will be responsible for installation, integration and training. The workstation will have five-year warranty support, while the specified forensic software will carry three-year support.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.