After the suicide of five persons, Telangana police hadstarted cracking down on the instant loan app scam. Now as per several reports,the scam has a deeper Chinese link.
The police have taken 5 Chinese nationals into custodyand investigations are on to ascertain how China is involved in this scam. Thepeople arrested are Hemanth Kumar Jha, director of Flash Cash Pvt limited,Gurugram, V. Manjunath, HR Manager at Juss IT Technologies Pvt LTD., Bengaluruand Abdul Lauk, Manager/Team leader at TGHY Trust rock Pvt. limited, Bengaluru.
Arrests were made after the suicide of G. Chandra Mohan,aged 38 who took loan of Rs 70,000 from 11 apps. "He repaid Rs 2 lakh tothese apps in installments but he was still being harassed for being adefaulter. This drove him to suicide," said P.V. Padmaja, DeputyCommissioner of Police (Balanagar), Cyberabad.
Chandra Mohan committed suicide and as per reports, hewas being harassed by the companies. Police in their investigations have foundout that some apps are involved in giving loans to people but during therepayment of these loans, they were harassed and blackmailed. These apps areavailable on Google Play Store.
A man named Hemanth, developed these apps incollaboration with Michael of China. He was running office from Gurugram andcollecting database of their customers. Police is also investigating the roleof a Bhutan national in India.
In further investigations, it has been revealed thatafter disbursing loan to customers for seven days, they were divided intodifferent categories. The customers were called for the collection of loans. Inthe next stage, they were send messages, later on WhatsApp messages were sentand in the end emails were send to these people.
Then, they also called the relatives of the people andstarted defaming them. "To recover the loan from customers they practiceddifferent methods depending upon the dues. In case of higher dues the treatmentwas very harsh, threatening and abusive. They also accessed the contacts ofrelatives and friends of the customers and sent them WhatsApp messages defamingthe defaulters," the DCP said.
As per the reports, company was taking 35% rate of interestper annum and it was imposing hugepenalties on defaulters. The police also found that these apps have tied-upwith Non-Banking Financing Companies (NBFCs). Police said notices will beissued to all NBFCs. The police have also written to Google to take down theapplications because of their criminal activities.
The modus operandi in this case is not different from other cases cracked bythe police during the last one month.
More than 30 accused, including four Chinese nationals have been arrested byHyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda police, the three commissionerates whichcover Greater Hyderabad.
It was on December 4 that E.S. Yadav (23) of Narsapur in Medak district hangedhimself, unable to bear the harassment by loan apps. He had taken a loan ofaround Rs 6,000.
K. Mounika (28), an agriculture extension officer, committed suicide byconsuming poison on December 16. She had taken multiple loans from various appsto the extent of Rs 2.5 lakh.
On December 17, Sunil, a 29-year-old techie hanged himself in Hyderabad. He hadtaken a loan of Rs 70,000 to 80,000 and was asked to return more than Rs 2 lakhand when he could not repay, the representatives of apps defamed him by sendingmessages to all his contacts.
According to Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy, 50 cases wereregistered in connection with the instant loan apps. The first arrests weremade on December 22 during the crackdown by Hyderabad and Cyberabad police onfive call centres in Hyderabad and Gurugram.
Hyderabad police arrested 11 people while Cyberabad police nabbed six people inthe multi-crore money-lending racket. Police claimed that thousands of peopleacross the country were targeted through instant loan apps after lockdown.
"The call centres in Hyderabad employed 600 telecallers and at Gurugramthere were nearly 500 telecallers, offering services to 30 money-lending apps.These money-lending app companies were illegally operating without followingRBI guidelines and subjecting people who borrowed money to harassment, forcingsome of them to commit suicide," said Hyderabad Police Commissioner AnjaniKumar said.
It was on December 25 that the first Chinese was arrested in the racket.Cyberabad police Yi Bai alias Dennis from Delhi. He was managing at least 11such apps offering small loans at extremely high interest rates. The primeaccused is suspected to be another Chinese national Zixia Zhang, who isbelieved to be currently in Singapore.
On December 27, Rachakonda police arrested three persons, including a femaleChinese national Liang Tian Tian. Parshuram Lahu Takve, his wife Liang TianTian and HR Manager S.K. Aaqib, were arrested from the Pune call centre. Theaccused had an agreement with four different financing companies in Mumbai andMysuru for loan recovery by setting up a call centre in Pune.
According to Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat the tele-callersabused customers in filthy language and threatened them with dire consequences.
On December 30, the Hyderabad police arrested two more persons, including aChinese national Zhu Wei alias Lambo. The 27-year-old Chinese was picked up atDelhi airport minutes before he was to board a flight to Frankfurt on his wayto Shanghai.
Lambo is alleged to be the overall head of four different companies runningseven call centres in Gurugram, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Police believe thatfour companies run by the accused allegedly carried out 1.4 crore transactionsworth nearly Rs 21,000 crore. He was reportedly in touch with another Chinesenational, Yuan Yuan alias Sissi alias Jennifer, who set up the operations inIndia but is believed to be in China.
On January 13, Rachakonda police arrested Chinese national He Jian and hisIndian associate Vivek Kumar from Thane. Jian's arrest came following interrogationof Liang Tian Tian. The arrested Chinese have reportedly revealed the names ofat least five other accused, all Chinese nationals.
Instant loan apps scam is not the first case in which Chinese have beenarrested. In October, the Hyderabad police had arrested Yah Hao from Delhi forillegally running betting apps and duping Indians of crores of rupees. Theinvestigators found similarity between betting racket and loan apps as bothused Indians as fronts and relied on digital wallets to move money.