Stop the scam: On the ‘digital arrest’ menace
The Supreme Court of India’s order of August 4 on the “digital arrest” menace is notable for not being lured into complacency. After all, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre’s status report showed that complaints on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal fell from 1,23,672 in 2024 to 58,249 in 2025, and stood at 16,377 in the first six months of 2026. The Court called the figures “certainly encouraging” and directed the Reserve Bank of India to circulate a standard operating procedure for temporary debit holds on mule accounts, States to notify cybercrime coordination centres and operationalise e-Zero FIRs, and an inter-departmental committee to examine a victim compensation framework. Thanks to advisories from banks, telecom operators and the police, fewer senior citizens and others are getting victimised by these scams, which have succeeded due to older victims’ deference to authority and fear of legal trouble. Yet, scammers find it easy to target youth and professionals, and senior citizens the advisories have not reached. And there have been very few convictions despite scrutiny and investigation, which suggests that law enforcement must move faster in tackling these scams. The digital scammers have proved nimble in their modus operandi. They route calls through SIM boxes to mask their origin, making them appear as Indian numbers, and use multiple mule accounts across many States to move funds swiftly. They are now known to deploy deepfakes on video calls to dupe victims and remain untraceable by investigators. In effect, the fraudsters always seem to be a step ahead of those pursuing them. The Court’s insistence on restoring money — completed in 36,290 cases involving ₹18.05 crore — and on the swift disposing of account-freeze cases, alongside detection systems such as MuleHunter.AI, used in over 20 banks, will help limit the damage even when perpetrators are not caught or convicted. But convictions are rare as many of these fraud and extortion schemes are run from overseas “scam compounds” in Myanmar, the wider Golden Triangle, and Cambodia. In Myanmar, scam centres proliferated through direct and indirect official patronage, even as recent scrutiny produced raids that were largely for show with these centres shifting to new areas in the conflict-ridden country. After Beijing’s crackdown, in 2023, on scam centres targeting Chinese victims, scammers shifted focus to other countries, with Indians also being trafficked and tortured to commit digital crimes against fellow citizens. New Delhi must use diplomatic pressure in coordination with China, the U.S. and ASEAN to compel Naypyidaw and Phnom Penh to act against the networks that host these compounds. Published - August 07, 2026 12:20 am IST Read Comments Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit READ LATER SEE ALL Remove Related Topics court / arrest / crime / Reserve Bank of India / cyber crime / senior citizens / police / banking / mobile phones / Myanmar / Cambodia / China / USA / ASEAN
- 1Cybercrime is addressed primarily under the Information Technology Act, 2000, a central statute governing offences like digital fraud, while state police retain investigative jurisdiction, explaining why the Court directed both the RBI and states to coordinate. The push for e-Zero FIRs reflects an effort to overcome jurisdictional delay, since Zero FIRs already allow police to register a case irrespective of territorial jurisdiction before transferring it later. This case shows how coordination between central regulators and state police machinery is essential to tackling borderless digital crime.
- 2The scam compounds in Myanmar's Golden Triangle and Cambodia drew wider attention after 2023, when Chinese authorities cracked down on centres defrauding Chinese citizens, prompting operators to pivot toward Indian and other Southeast Asian victims. India's engagement with ASEAN, of which Myanmar and Cambodia are members, alongside parallel diplomatic channels with China and the United States, is increasingly used to press for coordinated action against these networks. This reflects cybercrime becoming a subject of regional security cooperation rather than purely domestic law enforcement.
- 3The Supreme Court's intervention draws on its writ jurisdiction under Article 32 to protect fundamental rights, including the right to dignity and property of scam victims under Article 21, through continuing directions to the executive. The Reserve Bank of India's role in circulating a standard operating procedure rests on its regulatory powers over how banks handle suspicious accounts under banking and payment systems law. Tools like MuleHunter.AI, an RBI-backed artificial intelligence system already deployed in over twenty banks, show regulators increasingly pairing technology-driven compliance with statutory enforcement.
- 4The editorial's figures show reported cybercrime complaints falling sharply, from 1,23,672 in 2024 to 58,249 in 2025, and 16,377 in the first half of 2026, suggesting advisories and detection tools are having some effect. Even so, only ₹18.05 crore was restored across 36,290 cases, a modest sum relative to the scale of digital fraud losses reported nationally, which have run into thousands of crores annually. This gap between falling complaint numbers and persistently low conviction rates suggests the figures may partly reflect underreporting rather than a genuine decline in scam activity.