Jamtara is a city and a Nagar panchayat in the Jamtara Sadar subdivision of the Jamtara district in the Indian state of Jharkhand. It is the headquarters of the eponymous district, subdivision, and community development block.
Jamtara is nicknamed the "phishing capital of India", due to a history of pan-Indian scam incidents originating there.
Geography
Location
Jamtara is located at , 250 km from
Ranchi, the state capital, and 54 km from
Dhanbad.
It has an area of 1,801 km
2 and an average elevation of 155 metres (508 feet).
Education
Educational institutions in Jamtara include Edwards English School.
Demographics
In the 2011 Indian
census, the latest to date, Jamtara had a population of 29,415, composed of 89% Hindus and 10% Muslims. Males constituted 52% of the population and females 48%. Jamtara had an average literacy rate of 63.73%, lower than the national average of 74.4%; male literacy was 76.85% and female 50.08%. 13% of the population was under 6 years of age.
[ 2011 Census data censusindia.gov.in ]
Languages
According to the 2011 census,
Bengali language was the most-spoken language in Jamtara, with 12,713 speakers, followed by
Hindi language at 8,412,
Khortha language at 4,553, and
Santali language at 1,038.
Phishing industry
Since the 2010s, Jamtara has been known as the "
phishing capital of India", due to the proliferation of
cybercrime operations centred there.
Police from different Indian states began investigating these operations in 2015, making several arrests, though conviction rates were low, and the illicit industry was hardly affected.
Between April 2015 and March 2017, police from 12 Indian states reportedly made 23 journeys to Jamtara.
The 2020 Netflix crime drama series Jamtara – Sabka Number Ayega is a fictionalized look at the eponymous city's scam operations.
