Gwalior constables' WhatsApp group stops banking fraud

They have been able to recover at least Rs 15 crore which was lost by the people through banking fraud

A WhatsApp group started four years ago by two Gwalior constables has been able to recover at least Rs 15 crore which was lost by the people through banking fraud.

Named “Stop Banking Fraud”, the WhatsApp group has police forces across the country to make the tracking of online banking frauds faster and to provide the benefits of this initiative to many parts of the country.

“Saving people’s hard-earned money from cybercriminals becomes a passion after a point,” Yadav told The Indian Express, adding, “We have added officers from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to the group.”

The two Gwalior constables, Yadav and Tripathy, started this initiative in 2017 when in the month of March someone who lost Rs 40,000 to fraud came to them for help. Due to erratic power supply the police couldn’t send an email to the payment site on time.

When they called the representative using a landline they were asked to send a message mentioning the details. Through this, they could save Rs 32,000 by the next day.

“We thought that if we were able to save money in this way, we could help many more victims. With that thought, we started the WhatsApp group,” Yadav told the publication.

As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)’s data of cybercrime recorded in 2019 was 44,546 cases as compared to 27,248 in 2018. Less than one in five of those cases were detected.

Initially, Yadav and Tripathi did not get much help. They created the group and added 20 people but only five stayed. But they did not give up. More people started joining them once they could track and recover money.

After experiencing beaming success in their initiative, Yadav and Tripathi expanded the initiative to Telegram too. Along with the police officers, the groups also have nodal representatives of 75 service providers and five major payment aggregators, taking the number of members in the WhatsApp group to 256 and 2,231 in Telegram.

Gwalior Cyber Crime SP Sudhir Agarwal said, “The group was formed by the two constables from the cyber department nearly four years ago. It has helped us ensure that money lost to cybercrimes can be retrieved. Now, a web portal on similar lines has been started by the Ministry of Home Affairs.”

Check out DH's latest videos: