Call centres of app-based instant loan companies operating from Hyderabad were primarily used for soft reminders for a couple of days when the payment cycle fires.
This was the first stage of the ‘bucket’ method practised by the online micro financing companies to recover the loan amount from defaulters.
Three-tier architecture
The recovery operation is a three-tier architecture with levels ranging from ‘soft, hard, and raw’ reminders.
While soft reminders were given from Hyderabad, the next level operation was carried out by special abusive teams in Gurugram.
In the Stage-II, which starts after the fourth day, the telecallers would use filthy language, send fake legal notices and FIR copies to the borrowers to threaten them.
Raw reminders are the highest humiliation and intimidating semantic exercises, where the targets writhe in pain and eventually are pushed to the wall under emotional stress, police said.
“During this stage, they would call the family members, friends, and other contacts informing about the default and create WhatsApp groups defaming the loanees till the payment completes,” the investigators said.
Explaining the operations of these firms, Joint Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said there were so many layers of operations even in the payment of salaries.
“The companies in question won’t pay their employees directly. They outsourced other agencies for disbursing salaries whose payment is done through UPI or in cash,” he said, adding that those companies have multiple bank accounts as a precautionary measure to not come under the radar of enforcement agencies.
When asked if majority of mobile applications were developed by a same firm, Mr. Mohanty said, “Most of these apps have similar features when it comes to operations. However, we are yet to come to a conclusion on it.”
