Govt launches national helpline for reporting online financial frauds

In order to tackle rising cases of online financial frauds, Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday launched a national helpline for reporting such incidents and to help the victims to recover the money. Initially, helpline number 155260 is available in seven states and UTs but soon it will be operationalised across the country, writes Krishnanand Tripathi, ETV Bharat.

New Delhi: In order to tackle rising cases of online financial frauds, Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday launched a national helpline for reporting such incidents and to help the victims to recover the money, said the Home Ministry. Initially, helpline number 155260 is available in seven states and UTs but soon it will be operationalised across the country.

In the first phase, the service is available in the national capital Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, covering more than one-third of the country's population. According to officials, the rollout of this helpline in other States for pan-national coverage is underway. Victims in other states and UTs can file their complaint on the national cybercrime reporting portal.

"Reinforcing the commitment of the Modi Government to provide a safe and secure digital payments ecosystem, the Union Home Ministry under the leadership of the Home Minister Amit Shah has operationalised the national Helpline 155260 and Reporting Platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud," the home ministry said in a statement.

The MHA said the National Helpline and Reporting Platform provides a mechanism for persons cheated in cyber frauds to report such cases to prevent loss of their hard-earned money. The national helpline was launched for testing on April 1 and it has been operationalised for the public today. The helpline number 155260 and its reporting platform has been made operational by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The helpline is actively supported by the country's banking sector regulator - Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all major banks, payment banks, payment wallets and online merchants, said the government. The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System has been developed in house by I4C to integrate law enforcement agencies, banks and financial intermediaries.

Rising incident of cyber frauds

In order to collect the data of online frauds, the Centre launched a national cybercrime reporting portal www.cybercrime.gov.in in August 2019. According to the latest information given by the Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy in the Lok Sabha in March this year, more than 3,28,000 cyber crimes have been reported on the portal since its launch in August 2019.

Rs 1.85 crore saved since April

According to officials, since the soft launch, the helpline has helped in saving more than Rs 1.85 crore of defrauded money from reaching the hands of fraudsters, with Delhi and Rajasthan saving Rs 58 lakh and Rs 53 lakh respectively. The facility empowers both the banks and the police, by leveraging new-age technologies for sharing online fraud-related information and taking action in almost real-time. "The loss of defrauded money in online cheating cases can be stopped by chasing the money trail and stopping its further flow before it is taken out of the digital ecosystem by the fraudster," said the MHA.

How the helpline works:

Victims of cyber fraud can call on helpline number 155260, which is manned and operated by the concerned state police. Upon the receipt of the complaint, the Police operator records the fraud transaction details and basic personal information of the caller and submits them in the form of a ticket on the Citizen Financial Cyber Frauds Reporting and Management System. Then the Ticket is being escalated to the concerned bank(s), wallets, and merchants, among other entities, to trace the defrauded money.

An SMS is also sent to the victim with an acknowledgement number of the complaint with direction to submit complete details of the fraud on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in/) within 24 hours, using the acknowledgement number. The concerned bank, which can now see the ticket on its dashboard on the reporting portal, checks the details in its internal systems. If the defrauded money is still available, then the concerned bank puts a hold on it so that the fraudster cannot withdraw the money.

However, if the defrauded money has already moved out to another bank, then the ticket gets escalated to the next bank to which the money has been transferred. According to officials, this process is repeated until the money is saved from reaching into the hands of the fraudsters.

Helpline covers all major banks

According to officials, the Helpline and its Reporting Platform has all the major public and private sector banks onboard. It also has all major payment wallets and merchants such as PayTM, PhonePe, Mobikwik, Flipkart and Amazon linked to the platform. Officials said the success of the Helpline and Reporting Platform can be gauged from the fact that on several occasions, the defrauded money has been stopped from reaching fraudsters even after it has been moved by the cheats to five different banks to cover their trails.