HYDERABAD: Special teams of the Hyderabad police on Monday raided four instant loan app finance offices in Gurugram and Hyderabad, even as investigations showed that the entire illegal operation was run from Jakarta, reports Srinath Vudali.
Avinash Mohanty, Hyderabad joint commissioner of police (detective department), said 30 loan apps were run by these four firms, two each in Gurugram and in Hyderabad. “In these four offices, there were nearly 1,000 employees who were working as tele-callers. We are still probing how their operations are being done. We are questioning several persons,” he told TOI. Officials suspect that some Chinese nationals based in Jakarta and elsewhere could be involved. “It is too early to comment any further on this,” he added.
Probe is also on to ascertain whether the existing directors of these firms are dummy people, working at the behest of Chinese nationals, police sources said.
So far, three persons, including a software engineer and a woman agriculture officer of Telangana, killed themselves after they were humiliated for loan defaults on social media and their contacts harassed by these forms. On Monday, more people knocked the doors of various police stations, saying they were harassed for delay in repayment by a few hours. Police said the employees of these four call centres manage disbursement of loans and in recovery of money by harassing defaulters and the people on their phone contacts. Raids in the city were conducted in a prominent commercial complex in Greenlands and another office located in Prakash Nagar. They have seized at least two servers belonging to these offices located in India.
Several people were taken into custody and it has to be seen whether they will be arrested on Tuesday, or they will be let off after serving notice to reappear for probe, sources said.
Apart from these 30 apps operated by these four companies, officers said there are dozens of such companies spread across the country.