WhatsApp has banned 9,400 accounts linked to ‘digital arrest’ scams, Centre tells SC

Messaging platform WhatsApp has banned 9,400 accounts linked to “digital arrest” scams following an investigation launched in January, Live Law quoted a status report filed by the Union government before the Supreme Court as saying.

The Ministry of Home Affairs informed the court that the action was part of a coordinated effort involving multiple agencies to address the problem of impersonation-based cyber fraud.

WhatsApp stated that its investigation went beyond inputs shared by government agencies, treating them as starting points to identify and dismantle wider criminal networks rather than isolated accounts, Live Law reported. .

While about 3,800 accounts had been flagged by authorities, WhatsApp said that its internal processes enabled it to act against a much larger network involved in such scams.

According to submissions placed before the court, many accounts targeting Indian users were operated from organised scam centres in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia.

WhatsApp told an Inter-Departmental Committee in March that it had introduced and strengthened several enforcement tools, including systems to detect misuse of official logos, logging of account display names and machine learning models designed to identify evolving scam patterns.

It also said that it maintains a database of known scam-related assets to detect repeat offenders, Bar and Bench reported.

The company added that it is developing further safeguards, such as warnings for suspicious first-time messages, visibility of account age for unknown contacts and enhanced caller identification features, the legal news outlet reported.

The status report also noted that WhatsApp is working on “SIM binding” or linking accounts to physical SIM cards, The Hindu reported.

It has also agreed to retain data of deleted accounts for at least 180 days to support law enforcement investigations, the newspaper quoted the report as saying.

The report, filed through the Attorney General R Venkataramani on behalf of the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre, forms part of ongoing suo moto proceedings initiated by the Supreme Court in response to a rise in digital arrest scams in the country.

The court had on December 1 also extended a “free hand” to the agency to launch an anti-corruption investigation into bankers involved in the opening of mule accounts linked to cyber crimes.

The bench had expressed shock at the “staggering amounts” digital arrest scammers have been able to siphon off from India.

Government data cited in the report indicated that more than 2.41 lakh complaints related to digital arrest scams have been recorded, involving losses of approximately Rs 30,000 crore, according to The Hindu.

‘Digital arrest’ scams

In cases of “digital arrest”, criminals usually orchestrate the fraud by posing as law enforcement officers, often wearing uniforms and making video calls to victims from locations made to resemble government offices or police stations. They demand money for a “compromise” and “closure of a case” against the victims.

In some cases, the victims are “digitally arrested” with the scamsters claiming that the persons are required to be visible until their demands are met.

In January 2025, Scroll published a series of extensive reports about Chinese crime syndicates that run cyber crime centres from Southeast Asia, mainly Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. These highly sophisticated “scam compounds” are staffed with thousands of people, many of them from India, who are lured with fake job offers and then forced to work on scamming people back home.

Also read:

• My father lost Rs 10 lakh in a digital arrest scam. Here’s how he got some money back

• ‘Felt like I was under hypnosis’: How digital arrest scams dupe Indians of their hard-earned money