On the 4th of February, the Telangana High Court (HC,) directed the police to act against app based money lenders.
During a hearing, the State HC asked the Telangana police to initiate immediate and necessary action against the instant app based money lenders.
The court said, these app based lenders are accused of harassing borrowers over repayment of loans with higher rates of interest.
The court was hearing a petition filed by Kalyan Dileep Sunkara, a lawyer.
In his petition, he alleged these app based money lenders of harassing citizens of Telangana. He also sought a ban on all illegal online loan applications.
The division bench comprising of Chief Justice Hima Kohli directed the state Director General of Police (DGP) to ensure that such apps were blocked or deleted from Google Play store.
The single bench also ordered the police to arrest those running such apps and issuing instant loans.
The hearing on the matter is scheduled on the 18th of March.
Meanwhile, as per the directions of the Court, the Telangana Police launched an investigation in the matter.
The Police were also asked to file a status report on the sanction of loans by instant loan apps.
Since December 2020, six cases of suicides, due to harassment by such companies were reported in Telangana
Over 50 cases have been registered and over 30 people, including four Chinese nationals were arrested.
Besides the State Police, the Enforcement Directorate is also probing these FIRs.
Police said they have also engaged experts for data analysis for studying the voluminous data.
The preliminary probe into the financial transactions of the online loan app firms revealed 1.4 crore transactions worth nearly Rs. 21,000 crore.
Cases were registered in various police stations in the state based on several complaints alleging that the firms obtained sensitive data such as contacts, photographs from the mobile phones of the customers and using them to defame or blackmail to get the loan repayment.
Working on this, the Police launched an investigation in the matter.
