Gurugram: 9 members of loan app firm arrested for harassing and threatening victims

GURUGRAM — Nine members of a loan app firm who harassed people not repaying loans and threatened to send their morphed explicit images to others have been arrested by the Gurugram police’s Cybercrime Cell, an official said on Thursday.

The gang offered loans via the ‘FINSARA’ app and subsequently threatened to send morphed, explicit pictures of defaulters to their contacts.

The police said a woman lodged a complaint that she had taken a loan of Rs 3,000 through the app. When she failed to repay, she not only started receiving messages for the money, but the firm’s personnel also started harassing her by uploading her dirty posts on Facebook and repeatedly posting objectionable photos on WhatsApp. They threatened to send the photos to her family members if she did not repay the money.

The police said during the investigation, they nabbed Gaurav Wadhwa, Rahul Jain, Rohan Palha, Rohit Kumar, Brijendra Singh, Pawan Kumar, Avnish Giri, Shishu Kumar, and Vivek from Udyog Vihar on Wednesday.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that Palha, Wadhwa, and Jain are the owners of the company/app, while Rohit Kumar is the manager, Brijendera Singh and Pawan Kumar are the team leaders and Giri, Shishu Kumar and Vivek are the recovery agents and work in giving loans to the people through the loan app.

“To recover the loan from people who do not repay the loan, they hired people who used to recover money by morphing the victim’s photo and threatening to send it to social media platforms and their family members if the loan is not returned. For this, team leaders get Rs 25,000 per month and recovery agents get Rs 14,000 per month,” ACP, Cyber Crime, Priyanshu Diwan, said.

Eight mobile phones and a SIM box have been recovered from the possession of the accused, police said.