SHUBHANGI SHIFA
Ranchi, June 29: Ajun Kumar Dev, a professional with a small scale business, was in urgent need of Rs 12,000 last December and that was when he came across ‘instant loan’ apps online that promised him money instantly, without the hassle of lengthy documentation.
“I had never applied for any loan and so I thought of giving loan apps a try. I found five apps and applied for a loan on all of them. Within minutes, I received Rs 24,000 in all from five different accounts. When I checked the interest rates later, I was shocked to find that I had to repay Rs 8,000 for every Rs 4,800 I borrowed from each app within seven days,” said the 44-year-old from Kanke.
By February 1, he started receiving over 100 calls a day to repay loans he had never taken. “Unidentified people started calling and threatening me. They started contacting my colleagues, friends and relatives and started harassing them to repay my loan. They morphed my pictures in obscene ways and sent them to everyone on my contact list. They started threatening me that they would upload these pictures on social media, following which I approached police in December,” he said. In all, Dev was being forced to pay back Rs 3.5 lakh within a month against the Rs 24,000 loan he took, police said.
On May 11 this year, police registered a case on Dev’s complaint under sections 384 (extortion), 420 (cheating), and 465 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66, 66B, 67 A and 67 of the Information Technology Act was registered at Cyber Crime police station.
A police official discussed a similar case with the Lagatar24.com correspondent over the condition of not displaying their names. SI Rakesh (name changed) said, “With the rise of technical infrastructure, there have been crimes in the sector as well. Digital loan apps are a particular kind of dangerous platform. Scammers create such apps and display them with interesting loan offers. We have seen several similar cases.”
“Once a victim takes out a loan, the loanee is bombarded with text messages and phone calls threatening them for quick payment. If the victim refuses, they even go to calling and attacking their friends and family members, demanding they help pay back the loan. In certain cases, victims have even committed suicides, while some are often left estranged from their families due to the ‘drama’,” the SI added.
“People don’t check the details of the app and do not read the permissions that the app is asking for. These apps access all your phones details, including contacts and photos, which are later misused. Many young people are falling prey to fraudulent micro lending apps. The main lure of these apps is the easy processing of loans without any surety,” he said.
Talking in this regard, Cyber DSP Yashodhara said, “Several online loan applications in Google Play store are not registered or recognized by RBI as an NBFC. Their operations are unauthorized. People should be aware of Loan Apps which provide short terms loans at high interest rates. These apps can easily be found on app stores using the keywords: loan, instant loan, quick loan, etc. People should not give access to all the permissions to these loan apps. Along with this, they should also not accept terms and conditions of any such loan app.”
“People should be aware that all their phone contacts, photos, locations and phone memory will be compromised by these apps. Personal details, Aadhar or bank details should not be provided to such unregistered and unregulated apps. They may misuse personal photos and contacts of friends/relatives etc. stored in the device, to harass, defame and blackmail their victims,” she added.
