Multi-pronged action initiated including banning of 9400 WhatsApp accounts to tackle digital arrests scam, Supreme Court informed

New Delhi: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that a multi-pronged action involving telecom regulators, service providers, the RBI, tech giants and the CBI has been taken to tackle the rising menace of digital arrest scams, while WhatsApp banned 9,400 accounts involved in such offences.

Attorney General R Venkataramani informed the court that the action was detailed by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which has filed a comprehensive status report in pursuance of the Supreme Court’s directions of February 9 to curb rising cases of digital arrests in the country.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, which had taken suo motu cognisance of online frauds, including digital arrests, had issued a slew of directions including asking the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), and others to jointly hold a meeting to come up with a framework for providing compensation in digital arrest cases.

Digital arrest is a growing form of cybercrime in which fraudsters pose as law enforcement officers, court officials or personnel from government agencies to intimidate victims through audio and video calls. They hold the victims hostage and put pressure on them to pay money.

The court had earlier termed the siphoning of over Rs 54,000 crore by digital frauds as "absolute robbery or dacoity".

Detailing steps taken following the court's directions, it was submitted, "Telecom operators, digital platforms and financial regulators have begun implementing a series of measures to tackle digital arrest scams, including faster SIM blocking, biometric verification systems and platform-level safeguards by WhatsApp."

It was further highlighted that in direct response to concerns raised by I4C, MEITY and DoT, WhatsApp in January 2026 launched a structured, multi-week dedicated investigation specifically focused on digital arrest scams targeting Indian users.

"This investigation followed a rigorous methodology: identify seed signals, map networks, enforce against the entire network, build scaled automated defences,'' the report said.

It stated, out of around 3,800 scam-related accounts flagged under Section 79 IT Act takedown requests, only 17 were related to digital arrest scams, but its investigation mapped entire networks and led to 9,400 account bans.

WhatsApp also informed the committee that most such scam operations targeting Indian users originated from centres in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, and were run through clusters of accounts and groups with repeated patterns such as common names, reused media and coordinated behaviour, the report said.

"A communication by WhatsApp to the inter-departmental committee (IDC) constituted pursuant to the court's order stated that it banned 9400 accounts as part of a targeted probe to curb digital arrest scams," it added.