Karnataka: Over 250 illegal loan apps purged in 3 years

Bengaluru: Since 2023, the state police have identified as many as 254 illegal, unregistered loan apps. Though a majority of these apps have been brought down, new apps continue to pop up. According to data accessed by DH, 17 people have died by suicide since 2023 due to harassment by people running such apps and as many as 350 complaints of harassment have been filed with the police in three years.

While the majority of the apps were identified based on complaints by victims, the police also keep a close watch on advertisements posted on social media and take action against any fraudulent apps.

“Most people fall for such illegal apps after seeing advertisements on social media. Hence, our teams look out for such advertisements and act immediately,” M A Saleem, director general and inspector general of police, told DH. 

Many apps use fake photos and videos of well-known personalities to defraud people into using such apps.

“To convince people that these apps are credible, they tend to use photos or fake videos of people promoting the apps. People should check if they are registered and then proceed,” said Bengaluru city police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh.

However, the police also have challenges in tracking and bringing down these apps.

“If the apps are on Google Playstore or Apple Store, we can bring them down by writing to these platforms. However, apps hosted on other servers are difficult to track,” a senior police officer said. 

The police track the origin of apk files and gather clues from the money trail and emails to reach the culprits.

Most of these apps demand complete access to the applicant’s phone data and use these as leverage to harass them. In many cases, morphed or private photos of the victim have been circulated and the contact details have been misused to blackmail the applicants to shell out more money.

“They contact family and friends and blackmail the victims, threatening to send private photos or videos to their close circles,” officials said.

Loan scourge Apps brought down: 254

Harassment complaints 

2023: 191

2024: 94

2025: 65