The recommendation by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Empowerment of Women for the formulation of comprehensive and gender-sensitive cybercrime legislation is a timely recommendation for strengthening digital safety of women and children in India. Even as stronger laws address cybercrimes post-occurrence, digital awareness among women and parents can significantly reduce their online vulnerability. The parliamentary panel has rightly underscored the need for a comprehensive cybercrime law, complementing and harmonising existing statutes rather than abruptly replacing them, to significantly enhance legal certainty, enforcement efficiency, and victim confidence. The committee’s recommendation for a comprehensive law stems from its findings that victims, particularly women and children, face difficulty navigating the complex legal maze, which contributes to underreporting, delayed relief, and secondary victimisation. The Committee’s report highlights that cyber offences impacting women and children in the country are presently addressed through multiple statutes, including the Information Technology Act, 2000; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; the POCSO Act, 2012; and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986, supplemented by subordinate legislation such as the IT Rules, 2021. The panel found that while these provisions collectively cover a wide spectrum of offences—ranging from identity theft, voyeurism, stalking, defamation, deepfakes, and online harassment to Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM)—their dispersed nature often results in overlapping mandates, interpretational ambiguities, uneven enforcement, and procedural delays. Another critical observation made by the committee that demands urgent attention of the government for intervention is that while steady progress is being made in strengthening technical and investigative frameworks to address cybercrimes, robust systems for counselling, effective psychosocial support and rehabilitation of women victims of cyber offences remain inadequate and inconsistently accessible across states and union territories. The report further highlights that the committee notes that women are subjected to online harassment, morphing, sextortion, identity theft, and circulation of intimate images, thereby often experiencing severe emotional distress, social stigma, reputational harm, and economic hardship. The recommendations made by the committee to address these challenges include the establishment of a comprehensive, coordinated and victim-centred framework that bridges existing institutional gaps in coordination with the India Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), State Police, National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD); ensuring that every cyber victim, particularly women who report a complaint, is automatically connected to the nearest One Stop Centre (OSC) or other MWCD-supported services for psychological counselling, legal aid, and rehabilitation with strict safeguards for confidentiality; and strengthening the OSCs, Women Helpline (181), and Childline (1098) with cyber-specialised counsellors and trained staff to deal with trauma arising from online abuse. The establishment of a Cyber Survivor Compensation Fund, as recommended by the Committee, remains vital to support victims to overcome the financial burden faced in seeking legal remedies, digital forensic services and psychological counselling and therapy. The committee has also recommended the creation of dedicated cyber counselling units within OSCs and district police cyber cells, staffed with psychologists trained in digital trauma counselling. These units functioning in close collaboration with civil society organisations, mental health institutions, and cybersecurity experts, as suggested by the committee, is essential for achieving the core objectives. For continuity of care, the committee calls for the establishment of regional cyber rehabilitation centres, offering long-term psychosocial support, digital literacy rebuilding, vocational training, and reintegration support for women whose livelihoods or education have been disrupted due to cyber victimisation, but implementation of these recommendations by the government can be possible only with adequate budgetary allocation. Critical gaps in the current legal framework flagged by the panel for examination by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology concern AI-generated content, non-consensual image sharing, online impersonation and cross-border platforms. The committee’s observation that although cybercrimes targeting women have grown exponentially, manifesting in forms such as cyberstalking and online harassment, the present financial and institutional ecosystem for research and development in cybercrime prevention and cyber safety of women remains inadequate and fragmented mirrors the grim reality of inadequacy of budgetary support for strengthening digital safety of women. Access to digital technology has played a key role in the economic empowerment of women, financial inclusion, better access to education, increased social connectivity and access to various welfare schemes and programmes. They also get the opportunity to explore the social media platforms for leveraging the digital technology for marketing of products manufactured by them as part of small household economic activities or startups and brand building, but a lack of awareness on cybercrime also exposes them to targeted cyberattacks by cybercriminals. It is important that digital literacy and awareness on cybercrimes are dovetailed in various welfare schemes and programmes that require them to adopt digital technology so that they also learn about the digital safety precautions that are vital for their digital safety. Designing simple and easy-to-grasp digital literacy training materials is critical to guarantee that women from all socio-economic backgrounds benefit from a strengthened digital ecosystem.