HC directs Telangana police to act against app-based money lenders

The Telangana High Court onThursdaydirected the state police to initiate immediate andnecessary action againstthe instant app-based money lenders,accused of harassing borrowers overrepayment of loans withhigher rate of interest.

When apetition by Kalyan Dileep Sunkara, a lawyer,seeking to ban all illegal online loan applications came up, adivision bench comprising Chief Justice Hima Kohlidirectedthe state DGP to ensure that such appswere blocked or deletedfrom Google Play store.

The bench also ordered the police to nabthose runningsuch apps and issuing instant loans.

The petitioner had sought acourt direction to the stategovernment to ban all illegalonline loan apps available onGoogle Play store.

Posting the matter to March 18, the court also directedthepolice to file a status report on the sanction of loans byinstantloan apps, cases registered and on the investigation.

The police submitted that the lending companies, throughinstant loan apps offer loans to people and levy huge interestand processing charges, among others.

They then resort to systematic abusing, harassing andthreatening the defaulters through call centres operating fromacross the country.

Six cases of suicides, due to harassment by suchcompanies werereported in Telangana since December 2020.

Over 50 cases have been registered and over 30 people,including four Chinese nationals arrested so far even as theEnforcement Directorate is probing these FIRs.

Police said they have also engaged experts for dataanalysis for studying the voluminous data as a preliminaryprobe into the financial transactions of the online loan appfirms revealed 1.4 crore transactions worth nearly Rs 21,000crore.

Cases were registered in various police stations in thestate based on several complaints alleging that the firmsobtained sensitive data such as contacts, photographs from themobile phones of the customers andusing them to defame orblackmail to get the loan repayment.