Delhi Police cracks down heavily on Covid malpractices
New Delhi, May 4
With the Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava's push to curb Covid malpractices in the national capital, the Delhi Police has cracked down heavily on blackmarketing of life saving drugs to selling fake medicines, overcharging of ambulances to stocking of oxygen cylinders.
Delhi Police have registered 113 FIRs with 61 cases pertain to cheating and fraud in the name of providing covid medicines or oxygen etc while 52 cases pertain to black-marketing, hoarding or overcharging.
100 arrests have been made in these cases. In one day alone, taking cognizance of covid helpline and cyber helpline calls and reports, 37 cases of cheating have been registered and investigations taken up.
The officials stated that the action has begun on the fraud callers and cyber financial cheats. Delhi Police has in the last two days identified 200 mobile numbers, 95 bank accounts, 33 UTR and 17 UPI/Wallet involved in this inhuman crime and is in coordination with National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) and I4C of MHA for stoppage of payment and blocking of these numbers.
In a first, a payment of Rs.74, 380/- was stopped on May 3 by IDBI Bank. Earlier two amounts of Rs.11, 000/- and Rs.20, 000/- were stopped on 01/03/2021 by ICICI Bank and PayTM respectively. All these transactions were made by unsuspecting victims looking for Covid medicines, oxygen cylinders etc onl to be cheated by fraudsters operating to make money from people’s miseries. The quantum growth in digital transaction has brought with it the similar growth in fraudulent transactions too. The fraudsters ask unsuspecting victims to pay in Banks with IFSC Code outside Delhi. This is a need to do due diligence and not fall prey by transferring money to a bank at far off places like Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal, etc.
In a path-breaking effort to address these cyber frauds, Delhi Police cyber unit CyPAD has aligned with Cyber & Information Security Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, for a pilot project of the Ministry to create an integrated platform for law enforcement agencies and financial intermediaries like banks, wallets, merchants etc. for real time incident reporting, transmission, escalation, estoppels and resolution. The singular objective of this platform is to prevent the defrauded money from exiting the financial ecosystem and ending up in the hands of the fraudsters either in hard cash or as goods purchased over e-commercial sites.
Explaining the working mechanism of the platform officials said that in this : A victim calls up dedicated cyber helpline number #155260. The call is attended by a police person and after obtaining minimum mandatory details of the transaction, a token is generated and the beneficiary bank, wallet or merchant is alerted to trace and ‘stop’ the defrauded amount if it is still residing with it.
As soon as the concerned bank, wallet or merchant is digitally notified, it stops the flow of the defrauded money and reports back to the platform; in case where the defrauded money has shifted to another financial intermediary, the same is alerted and the platform is intimated of the same. This process is repeated till the alleged amount has either been kept on temporary hold or is reported to have been either withdrawn or consumed by way of delivery of goods etc.
After reporting the incident, the complainant is notified by way of an SMS containing the reference number of his complaint and a link to www.cybercrime.gov.in the website on which a formal and detailed complaint is required to be lodged by the victim within the next 24 hours.
Once a formal complaint has been received over the national cybercrime portal, appropriate police proceedings follow to retrieve and revert the money into the victim’s account and to trace the fraudster for invoking penal laws of the land.
Where no such formal complaint is received within 24 hours of calling up the helpline, the money so stopped is released by the intermediary concerned to travel as per the instructions of the beneficiary.
The fundamental and most critical aspect here is the ‘Time of Reporting the Incident’ – crime data analytics have indicated that where the victim reports an incident within an hour of the fraud having been committed, there exists a high probability in ensuring that the money doesn’t reach the cheat and is ‘stopped’ within the financial ecosystem regulated by the Reserve Bank of India.
Under this pilot initiative, an amount of Rs. 84510 was stopped on 17/04/2021 by Karur Vyasa Bank, an amount of Rs. 39,001 was stopped by Airtel Payment Bank on 23/04/2021, two amounts of Rs. 11,000 and Rs. 20,000 were stopped on March 1 by ICICI Bank and PayTM respectively and an amount of Rs. 74,380 was stopped on May 3 by IDBI Bank, officials added.
All these transactions were made by unsuspecting victims who were looking for Covid related medicines, oxygen cylinders etc. These are only few of the success stories. During its pilot phase itself, the platform has prevented over Rs 20 Lakh from ending into the hands of the cyber cheats from where it is difficult to retrieve. In all these cases, necessary legal proceedings by way of registering FIRs etc. is being carried out so that the ‘stopped’ moneys can be restored to the bonafide victims at the earliest.
With a concerted push being given to the cyber helpline number #155260, Delhi Police has already increased call-taking capacity and plans are afoot to further scale it up to cater to the ever growing needs.
Delhi Police believes that this path-breaking innovation of the MHA and Delhi Police which has the potential of changing the handling paradigm of cyber frauds in the country once the platform is scaled up to the national level.
