More Stories

Informist, Monday, Dec. 1, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Monday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the digital arrest scams taking place across the country, saying the premier investigating agency's immediate attention is required. To strengthen the CBI's hands, the court said the agency will have a free hand to probe the role of bankers under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, in cases where bank accounts are opened to facilitate such scams.

 

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant impleaded and issued notice to the Reserve Bank of India to assist the court and to inform it by when artificial intelligence and machine learning can be implemented to identify such accounts and freeze the proceeds of crime in them.

 

The authorities under The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, should cooperate fully with the CBI, the bench, also comprising Justice Joymalya Bagchi, said. The states that have not granted blanket consent to the probe agency to conduct investigations within their respective territories should grant consent for this probe, the bench said.

 

Having regard to the magnitude of the crime and seeing that territorial jurisdiction is often beyond the country's borders, the court asked the CBI to request assistance from Interpol as and when needed. If the facts show an alarming and negligent approach of telecom service providers in issuing subscriber identification module cards and multiple SIM cards in the same name, the court directed the Department of Telecommunication to submit a proposal to prevent the misuse of SIM cards.

 

Further, the states should quickly set up state-level cybercrime centres and inform the top court if they face any impediment, the bench said. The authorities under the Information Technology Rules should store data of all mobile phones reported for cyber crimes and named in first information reports in different states, it added.

 

"The gravity and enormity of the crime can be judged by the fact that most of the states in one voice have stated that most of the time senior citizens have been targeted by the fraudsters by various means," said the apex court. Digital arrest scams often involve extortion, with people being coerced to deposit large sums of money on dubious counts, the court noted.

 

On Nov. 3, expressing shock that over INR 30 billion had been collected from victims of digital arrest scams, the Supreme Court had said it would deal with the issue with "iron hands". "It's shocking that almost 3,000 crore (INR 30 billion) has been collected from the victims," Justice Kant and Justice Bagchi had said. "And this is just in our country. If we don't pass harsh and stringent orders, the problem will magnify."

 

The court had taken suo motu cognisance of the rising number of incidents of scamsters using "digital arrest" to extort money from citizens after a complaint that a forged Supreme Court order was being used to con people. In October, the court had issued notices to the Centre, the CBI, and other parties to come up with a "stern" action plan against the scamsters. The court was "aghast" that the fraudsters had fabricated multiple judicial orders, including a freeze order issued under the money-laundering law bearing the forged signatures of a judge and an officer of the Enforcement Directorate and a court stamp. The forgeries included various fictitious proceedings before the Bombay High Court and false claims of investigation by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

 

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd. by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt. Ltd.

 

Informist Media Tel +91 (22) 6985-4000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

 

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2025. All rights reserved.