The Centre has informed the Supreme Court that it is considering multi-pronged actions, including temporary debit holds on suspicious accounts, to combat digital arrest frauds. A status report submitted by Attorney General R Venkataramani details the third meeting of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC).
The Centre has submitted a status report to the Supreme Court on measures to combat digital arrest frauds. The report endorses the Reserve Bank of India's proposed Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) framework, which includes temporary debit holds on suspicious accounts or amounts to prevent money-mule activities and cyber-enabled frauds. It urges the court to approve this framework.
The report, submitted by Attorney General R Venkataramani, states that the third meeting of the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) was held on March 12 under the chairmanship of the Special Secretary (Internal Security), Ministry of Home Affairs. Discussions involved major telecom service providers and WhatsApp.
The Department of Telecommunications has been asked to expedite notification of the Telecommunications (User Identification) Rules and related Authorisation Rules for implementing the Biometric Identity Verification System (BIVS) within three months. A national-level system for visibility of SIM issuance across operators should be in place within six months thereafter, making the BIVS-based cross-operator SIM monitoring operational before December 2026.
The meeting also covered ensuring accountability of telecom service providers (TSPs) for compliance by point-of-sale vendors, enhancing AI-based fraud detection and monitoring systems including analytics on suspicious calling patterns and SIM usage, and examining the feasibility of reducing the blocking timeline for suspicious SIM cards to 2-3 hours while maintaining safeguards.