Meta-owned WhatsApp informed the Supreme Court that it has banned over 9,400 accounts linked to digital arrest scams in India over a 12-week period beginning January 2026, as part of a targeted enforcement drive undertaken in coordination with government agencies.
The disclosure was made through submissions placed before the Court through the Attorney General R Venkataramani in the ongoing suo motu proceedings concerning the rise of such scams, in which fraudsters impersonate law enforcement and judicial authorities to extort money from victims.
A multi-pronged action involving telecom regulators, service providers, the RBI, tech giants and the CBI has been taken to tackle the rising menace of digital arrest scams, besides WhatsApp banning 9,400 accounts involved in such offences, the Centre has told the Supreme Court.The action was detailed by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which has filed a comprehensive status report in pursuance of the Supreme Court’s directions of February 9 to curb rising cases of digital arrests in the country.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, which had taken suo motu cognisance of online frauds, including digital arrests, had issued a slew of directions including asking the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), and others to jointly hold a meeting to come up with a framework for providing compensation in digital arrest cases.
The fresh status report, filed through Attorney General R Venkataramani, detailed the enforcement actions taken by tech giant WhatsApp in the last 12 weeks since January this year.“In direct response to concerns raised by I4C, MEITY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) and DoT, WhatsApp in January 2026 launched a structured, multi-week dedicated investigation specifically focused on digital arrest scams targeting Indian users.
This investigation followed a rigorous methodology: identify seed signals map networks enforce against the entire network build scaled automated defences,” it said, adding 9,400 accounts have been banned due to alleged involvement in digital arrests.To further protect users, WhatsApp is deploying several “enforcement innovations”, including logo detection where systems to identify and remove accounts using official police or government insignia in display pictures, the status report said.
WhatsApp is contemplating introducing a new feature to warn users when they receive a call from a “newly created” or “non-tenured” account, a common trait of scam profiles, the status report said, adding that process to automatically hide profile pictures of suspicious unknown callers to prevent scammers from using visual cues of authority will also be introduced.
The DoT and the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) have committed to a strict new timeline for neutralising fraudulent SIM cards, including the fact that the committee is working toward a mechanism to block suspicious SIM cards within 2 to 3 hours of identification, it said.
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