Tightening the noose around people involved in financial frauds, India has blocked 7 million mobile numbers due to suspicious activity, financial services secretary Vivek Joshi said on Tuesday.
“Mule accounts should be closed. I4C gets those numbers…some banks are cooperating, some are not. So, now through the RBI and the government, they will take those actions and close the (mule) accounts,” Joshi said after chairing an inter-agency meeting on issues related to financial cyber security and online financial frauds. I4C stands for Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre.
The meeting was attended by senior representatives from the RBI, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and departments of economic affairs and revenue among others. States have been asked to keep Aadhaar data secure that has been otherwise misused, Joshi said.
“(Regarding) Sudden transactions in inert or inoperative accounts, some restrictions have been put there,” Joshi said. For instance, the balance would have been `50, but suddenly `50,000 would have come into that account. It was felt in the meeting that there should be some restrictions at the time of withdrawal.
Right now, I4C is in regular contact with NPCI, some Banks and the telecom department but there has to be proper access to all stakeholders on a common platform, for which I4C is the nodal agency under MHA for these (cyber) crimes.
“Telecom secretary informed in the meeting that 7 million mobile numbers involved in suspicious activity, some of which have been monitored by them (telecom) and some by 14C have been blocked,” Joshi said.
Through I4C `900 crore has been blocked since 2021 from 0.35 million persons. Out of this, `600 crore was blocked this year, he said.
Banks have been instructed to reduce the response time gap on fraud alerts so that corrective action can be taken within the golden period, he added.
The department of financial services will hold the next meeting in mid-January.