The digital arrest scam persists from overseas actors

The digital arrest scam persists from overseas actors

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.