The Chief Minister's Office of Andhra Pradesh announced on Friday, 29 May 2026 that Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu has directed the immediate rollout of a Zero FIR mechanism to combat cyber crime, instructing police to register complaints instantly upon a victim's call to the Cyber War Room and freeze suspicious accounts within the 'golden hour' window before funds can be transferred.

Context

Addressing a high-level review meeting at the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat, CM Naidu directed that victims contacting the Cyber War Room must have a Zero FIR lodged immediately — 'జీరో ఎఫ్ఐఆర్ నమోదు చేయడం ద్వారా బ్యాంకులను అప్రమత్తం చేయాలి' ('register a Zero FIR and alert the banks immediately'). The instruction centres on exploiting the narrow time window — termed the 'golden hour' — before fraudulently obtained funds are moved out of victim accounts. Banks are to be notified in real time so that transfers can be blocked at source.

The Chief Minister also called for cyber patrolling on the lines of conventional police patrolling, ordering that citizens be shielded from falling prey to cyber criminals through proactive online surveillance. The meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Saiprasad, DGP Harish Kumar Gupta, CID Chief Ravishankar Ayyannar, EAGLE Chief AK Ravikrishna, and Special Secretary Vijay Kumar, along with other senior officials.

Policy Backdrop

A Zero FIR allows a police complaint to be registered at any station regardless of jurisdiction, ensuring no procedural delay in the critical early phase of a cyber fraud. The concept gained national traction after the Ministry of Home Affairs established the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal in 2019, creating a centralised framework — later expanded into the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) — for cross-state coordination on digital offences.

Andhra Pradesh has a prior track record in technology-enabled governance. During Naidu's 2014–2019 tenure, the state expanded cyber crime cells alongside broader e-governance infrastructure. The current directive builds on that lineage, applying rapid-response logic to financial fraud at a time when digital transactions across India have surged and online scams have multiplied correspondingly.

Stakeholders and Impact

Cyber crime victims stand to benefit most directly: the Zero FIR model removes the jurisdictional hurdle that often causes delays of hours or days, during which stolen funds are layered across multiple accounts and become near-impossible to recover. Banking institutions operating in the state will need to establish or strengthen real-time alert channels with the Cyber War Room to act on freeze requests within minutes.

For the Andhra Pradesh Police, the directive demands both structural change — dedicated cyber patrolling units — and operational agility. States that have piloted similar rapid-response cyber cells have reported improved fund-recovery rates in the immediate aftermath of fraud, though sustained impact depends on staffing, training, and inter-agency coordination with banks and payment networks.

What's Next

The immediate focus will be on operationalising the Zero FIR workflow within the existing Cyber War Room infrastructure and establishing a direct, low-latency communication protocol with banks. The rollout of dedicated cyber patrolling units — analogous to beat policing but applied to the digital domain — will be a key indicator of how quickly the directive translates into field-level action.

If successfully implemented, Andhra Pradesh could serve as a replicable model for other Indian states grappling with rising financial cyber fraud, particularly as the national I4C framework encourages state-level innovation in first-response mechanisms.