Somebody borrows a small amount from an app, because it took four minutes and asked no questions. A few weeks later their mother, their manager and a cousin they last spoke to in 2019 are all receiving messages calling them a thief, and somewhere there is a photograph of their face on a body that is not theirs. The amount involved is frequently a few thousand rupees. The thing that is actually being used against them is everybody they know, and that was handed over at install, in a list of permissions nobody reads. Understand that and the whole situation changes shape. The debt and the harassment are two different things. You may genuinely owe a small sum — that is a civil matter with a proper route. What is being done to you is a separate wrong, and it is complained about separately, and the fact that you borrowed does not license any of it. Paying does not end it. This is the part people learn too late: a payment proves the method works, and the figure afterwards grows — a new charge, a penalty, a final settlement that is never final. And the counter-move that actually works is not a payment, a lawyer or a block list. It is this: tell your own people before the app does. One short, calm message to your family and your close colleagues — a loan app has my contacts, you may get abusive messages or a doctored photograph, please ignore them, I am dealing with it — and the entire operation loses its weapon. Because the weapon was never information. It was shame, and shame only works while nobody knows. The rest of this page is the practical order: what to do in the first three hours, how to preserve evidence that a complaint can actually be built on, where to complain and in how many places, how content is taken down, how to tell whether a regulated lender is behind the app at all, and what to do if the debt is real. And if you have reached a point where this feels like the end of everything, please read the short section near the end of this page before you do anything else.
It helps enormously to understand the business you have walked into, because once you see it the fear reduces and the right moves become obvious.
An operation of this kind is not primarily a lender. Lending a few thousand rupees to a stranger with no checks, at a loss if they do not repay, is a bad business. What makes it a good business is everything else: the processing charges taken out before the money arrives, the penalties, and above all the means of collection — your entire social network, delivered to them by you at install.
So the loan is the bait and the permissions are the catch. Which means the central question is not “how do I repay this?” It is “how do I take the leverage away?” — and the answer to that has two parts, one technical and one social, and both are in your hands today.
This also explains something victims find baffling: why the harassment continues after they have paid, and why it escalates when they protest. The operation is not working towards settlement. It is working the leverage for as long as the leverage produces payments.
This is the sentence to hold on to when you feel you have no standing to complain because you did take the money.
A debt is a civil matter. Somebody who is owed money has a route: a demand, a notice, and if necessary a proceeding in which they produce their documents and a forum decides. That route exists and nobody is suggesting you should not pay a genuine debt.
What has been done to you is a different thing entirely. Messaging your contacts to shame you, abusing your family, circulating a doctored image, threatening you or the people around you — none of that is debt collection, and none of it becomes permissible because the underlying amount is owed. It is complained about on its own footing.
Which has a practical consequence worth stating: you do not have to resolve the debt before you complain about the conduct. People delay a complaint for weeks because they feel they must clear the account first. The two are unrelated, and the complaint is the urgent one.
The instinct is overwhelming and it is usually wrong, so it deserves a section of its own.
What happens when somebody in this position pays: the harassment stops for a day or two, and then a further amount is demanded. A charge that was not mentioned. A penalty for the delay. A separate “processing” item. A final settlement figure which is followed by another final settlement figure. And the pressure is applied with more confidence, because the operator now knows exactly what works on you and roughly what you can find.
Four signs you are in this pattern rather than in a repayment: the amount demanded has changed more than once; the figure does not match anything in the agreement; payment is demanded to a personal identifier rather than a company account; and the deadline is always a few hours away.
Where there is a real regulated lender behind the loan, pay it — through the proper channel, against the proper reference, and get the closure document. That is dealt with further down. Where there is not, paying is a transfer to somebody who will come back.
Nobody reads an install screen, and these operations rely on that completely. It is worth knowing what was asked for, because it tells you what they have and therefore what they can do.
Contacts. Every name and number in the phone, which is the collection department.
Photographs and media. The gallery, which is where the material for a doctored image comes from — frequently a family photograph.
Messages. Which reveals your other borrowings, your bank alerts and your financial position.
Call logs. Which tells them who you actually speak to, as distinct from who is merely in the phone.
Location and device details. Which is used in threats about where you live and work.
Camera or a selfie for verification. Which produces a clear frontal photograph of your face.
Read that list and the pattern of the harassment stops being mysterious: everything they are doing was prepared for in the first ninety seconds. Which is also why the next sections are about removing it.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
If you do nothing else from this page, do these, in this order, today.
| Order | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Revoke the app’s access to contacts, photographs, messages and location in your phone’s settings. Then uninstall it. |
| 2 | Screenshot everything already received, with numbers and times visible. Start a call log. |
| 3 | Send the short warning message to your family and close colleagues. |
| 4 | File on the cybercrime portal and call the helpline. |
| 5 | Write the police complaint and file it. |
| 6 | Stop answering their calls, block as they come, and keep a note of every new number. |
Notice what is not on that list: paying, negotiating, arguing, explaining yourself to the caller, or waiting to see whether it stops on its own. Those are the six things people do instead, and they are the reason this runs for months in some households and three weeks in others.
Uninstalling alone is not always enough, and the order matters: revoke first, uninstall second.
Go to the phone’s own settings, find the application, and turn off every permission individually — contacts, photographs and media, messages, phone, location, camera, microphone.
Then uninstall. If it resists removal or reappears, that is itself worth recording and reporting, and it is a reason to have the phone looked at.
Check for anything else that arrived with it. These installs sometimes bring companions, and an app you do not remember installing should go.
Change the passwords on your email and your main accounts, from a different device if you can, because message access may have exposed codes.
Do not factory reset in a hurry. Your evidence is on that phone. Preserve the screenshots and the logs somewhere else first.
What revoking does not do is recall what has already been taken. The contacts they copied are copied. That is precisely why the social step — warning your own people — is not optional, and why it is the step that actually ends this.
A predictable next move, and it catches people who have already done everything right.
Once an app is removed, a message arrives: install this to see your settlement, install this to close your account, install this to stop the calls, install our official app because the one you had was fake. Every version of that is an attempt to restore the access you just removed, and some of them bring worse than the original.
Install nothing, from anybody, in connection with this matter. Not from a link in a message, not from a link that looks like a store page, not because the caller says the account cannot be closed otherwise. An account can always be dealt with on paper or through a regulated channel.
The same applies to anything asking you to grant remote access to your phone or computer, to join a screen-sharing session, or to scan a code. Those are not collection steps. They are the next attack.
This is the most important practical advice on this page and the hardest to follow, so it gets space.
The operation is built on one assumption: that you would rather pay than have your mother, your manager and your old classmates think you are a thief. As long as that is true, they have something to sell you. The moment the people who matter already know, there is nothing left to threaten.
So send the message before they do. Not after. The difference between your family hearing it from you in a calm sentence and hearing it from an abusive stranger with a doctored photograph attached is the difference between a bad week and a year of damage.
People resist this for an understandable reason: it feels like confessing. It is not. You are warning people about an attack on you, which is a completely different thing, and almost everybody who receives such a message responds with sympathy rather than judgement — in part because so many families have now seen this happen to somebody.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Short, factual, no apology, no detail about the amount. The longer the message, the worse it reads.
Something in this shape, in whatever language you and they use: “A loan app has taken the contacts from my phone. You may receive abusive messages about me, or even a doctored photograph. It is false. Please ignore it and do not reply to them. I have filed a complaint and I am dealing with it.”
Send it to the people who matter — immediate family, close friends, your manager, one or two colleagues. You do not need to message two hundred people.
Do not explain the loan. The amount, the reason and the circumstances are nobody’s business and they invite questions.
Do not apologise. You are the one being attacked.
Ask them not to engage. Replying to the harassers confirms the number is live and invites more.
Ask them to keep what they receive. It is evidence, and it is better collected than deleted.
Often this is how a person finds out at all — a brother calls and asks what is going on. Unpleasant, and recoverable.
The move is the same and it is now urgent rather than pre-emptive. Tell them yourself, in the same short factual terms, and ask them for whatever they received so that it can go into the complaint. An abusive message sent to your relative, with the sender’s number, is some of the strongest material there is — far stronger than a message sent only to you.
Collect what each person received, as a screenshot from their phone showing the sender.
Ask them not to reply, and not to pay anything on your behalf, which happens and makes everything worse.
Warn the ones who have not been contacted yet. The list is being worked through.
Tell elderly relatives explicitly. They are the ones most likely to be frightened into paying or into believing it.
The fear here is specific — that this will cost a job — and the response is to get ahead of it rather than to hope it was not seen.
A short note to your manager, in writing, the same day: a loan app has taken the contacts from my phone, abusive messages about me may reach you or others here, they are false, I have filed a complaint, and I am happy to share the complaint reference. That is the whole of it. No amount, no history, no apology.
Two things work in your favour. Most employers in India have now seen this happen to somebody, and it is widely understood as a known racket rather than as evidence about you. And a person who reported it themselves, with a complaint reference, reads completely differently from a person who said nothing until asked.
Where messages have gone to clients, customers or a professional network, the same approach applies and the same brevity. Where it has gone further than that and your reputation or your practice is affected, there are additional routes — our online defamation notice service and our defamation notice guide deal with that side, which is a separate exercise from the complaint.
The worst part of this, and the part people are most ashamed to mention. A photograph from the phone’s gallery — frequently a family picture or the verification selfie — is crudely combined with something obscene and circulated to the contact list.
Two things to know immediately. It is obviously fabricated and almost everybody who receives it recognises that at once. And it is treated seriously under the rules governing online content, more seriously than ordinary abuse, because of what it is.
Preserve it before anything else — obtained from whoever received it, with the sender’s number and the date visible.
Do not circulate it further, including to show people what was done. Describe it; do not forward it.
File it with the complaint, because it changes the character of the matter.
Request takedown from every platform it appeared on, and keep the reference for each request.
Tell your contacts in advance that such an image may arrive, which is the single thing that defuses it — an expected fake is not a scandal.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Where the circulated material is sexual or intimate in nature, the position is stronger than many victims realise, and the channels are designed to move faster for exactly this kind of content.
Platforms operating in India are expected to act on a complaint about such material within a short period, and there is a specific route for a person whose image has been used in that way. That is a better route than arguing with an operator, and it does not depend on anybody being traced first.
So treat takedown and the criminal complaint as two parallel tracks rather than a sequence. The takedown deals with the material now. The complaint deals with the people, which takes longer. Waiting for the second before doing the first is a mistake.
Our content takedown request service prepares and files these requests, and where the conduct extends to stalking or sustained abuse, our cyber bullying and stalking complaint service covers that footing.
While this is happening, an offer will arrive — sometimes within hours — from somebody who says they can get everything deleted, the police contacted, the account closed, for a fee.
Do not pay it. It is either the same operation under a second name, or a different one that found you through the first. Takedown is done through the platform and the official channel, and it does not require paying an intermediary who appeared at your lowest moment.
The same applies to anybody who contacts you offering to “settle with the company”, to a person claiming to be a lawyer who found you without being approached, and to any offer that requires payment to a personal account. A genuine professional does not find you through the harassment.
The arithmetic of this is worth seeing laid out, because people in the middle of it cannot see the shape.
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| The disbursal | Less than the sanctioned amount arrives, because charges were taken out first. |
| The term | Far shorter than expected — days rather than months — so repayment is due almost immediately. |
| The first default | Charges begin, and they are described in terms that do not match anything you saw. |
| The referral | Another app is suggested, to clear this one. Sometimes by the same operator. |
| The second loan | Repays the first, with its own charges, its own short term, and its own permissions. |
| The stack | Within weeks, several apps, several demands, and a total that nobody can reconstruct. |
Every family we have seen in the serious version of this got there by the fourth row. That is where the intervention has to happen, and the next section is the whole of the advice.
One line: do not take a second app loan to clear the first. Nothing on this page matters more in rupee terms.
It feels like solving the problem and it is the mechanism by which a small, survivable amount becomes an unmanageable one. It also multiplies the harassment, because each new app takes its own copy of your contacts and your gallery, so the campaign goes from one operation to four.
If the money genuinely has to be found, find it from a person, a salary advance, a bank, a co-operative, or a regulated lender — in that order of preference.
If it cannot be found, that is survivable. A small unpaid debt is a civil matter. It is not worth the spiral and it is certainly not worth your health.
Tell somebody the real number. People in this spiral hide the total, including from themselves, and the hiding is what allows it to grow.
Stop installing. If you are already three apps in, the first decision is that there is no fourth.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
This determines which routes are open to you, so it is worth half an hour even while everything else is happening.
The agreement or sanction message. Somewhere there is usually a named entity — a company, sometimes with a registration number. That name is the single most useful thing you can find.
The app’s own listing. The developer name, the contact address and the website, captured as a screenshot before you lose access to it.
Where the money came from. The credit in your bank statement names a sender, and that name is frequently different from the app’s.
Where repayment is demanded. A company account is one thing; a personal identifier is a very different and much more telling thing.
The communications. Any email, any letter, any signature block — these often name an entity that the app itself does not.
What you are trying to establish is simple: is there a real, regulated lender anywhere in this, or is there not? The answer puts you on one of two completely different paths, and the next two sections are those paths.
Lending in India is a regulated activity. The framework for digital lending expects it to be done by or for an entity that is itself regulated, with disclosure of who the lender actually is, what the charges are, and how a grievance is raised.
An app that discloses none of that, that names no entity, that demands payment to a personal identifier and that collects by messaging your relatives is operating outside that framework entirely. That is not merely bad behaviour; it is itself a thing to report, and the regulator maintains a channel for complaints about entities operating without authorisation.
Report it as an unauthorised operation, in addition to the cybercrime complaint, because the two go to different places and do different things.
Say what you could not find — no entity named, no grievance officer, no address — because the absence is the point of the complaint.
Include the account or identifier that money was demanded into, which is the most actionable item in any such complaint.
Do not expect your money back from this route. It is about stopping the operation, which matters, and it is a different objective from recovery.
Our RBI complaint assistance service prepares that complaint, and it is worth filing even where you expect nothing for yourself, because these operations are shut down on the strength of accumulated complaints.
Sometimes there is, and that is better news than it feels like, because it gives you a channel with obligations attached.
Where a regulated entity is the lender — whether the app is its own or it has arrangements with one — that entity is answerable for how collection is carried out on its behalf. Conduct in collection is not a free-for-all; there are expectations about how borrowers are contacted, at what hours, and what may be said, and an entity cannot escape them by pointing at an agent.
So in that situation you have a grievance to raise with the lender itself, naming the conduct, and then an escalation route if it is not dealt with. That is frequently the fastest way to stop the calls, because an entity with a licence to protect behaves very differently from an anonymous operation.
Our banking complaint service prepares that grievance and our banking complaint guide sets out how the escalation works. Keep the complaint reference, because the escalation depends on having given the entity its opportunity first.
No figures appear on this page, deliberately, because they vary by operation and quoting them would be useless to you. What is worth understanding is the structure, because it explains why the demand never matches your arithmetic.
Charges deducted at disbursal, so that less arrives than was sanctioned while the full amount is repayable.
A very short term, so that a default happens almost immediately and penalties begin.
Penalties expressed per day, which compound into something enormous over a few weeks against a small principal.
Charges that appear for the first time in the demand and correspond to nothing you agreed.
A figure that moves, which is the clearest single sign that you are not in a repayment but in an extraction.
Where a regulated lender is involved, the charges have to be disclosed and a borrower is entitled to a statement showing them. Asking for that statement, in writing, is a useful move in itself — both because you are entitled to it and because an operation that cannot produce one has told you what it is.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Complaints in this area succeed or fail on documentation, and most victims arrive with a vivid account and almost nothing usable. Half an hour of collection changes that completely.
| Item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Messages, as screenshots | With the sender’s number and the date and time visible in the image itself. |
| A call log | Every number, the date and time, and in one line what was said or threatened. |
| What your contacts received | From their phones, showing the sender. The strongest material there is. |
| The app’s identity | Name, developer, listing, and any entity named in the agreement. |
| The money | What was credited and by whom; what was paid and to which account or identifier. |
| The permissions | A note of what the app had access to, which explains how it did what it did. |
| Anything circulated | Including an image, preserved without being forwarded further. |
Keep it all in one folder, with a dated index, and keep a copy somewhere other than the phone. Our police complaint drafting service works from exactly this material, and a complaint built on it is a different document from one built on a conversation.
A small technical point that decides whether material is usable.
Capture the whole screen, including the sender’s number or name at the top and the time stamp. A cropped image of the words alone proves nothing.
Do not crop or annotate. Keep the originals exactly as captured; make a separate copy if you want to mark something.
Capture in sequence, so that a reader can follow the conversation rather than seeing one isolated line.
Include the abusive ones in full, however unpleasant. Softening them weakens the complaint.
Note the number separately too, in a written list, because numbers are hard to read from an image and a complaint needs them in text.
Back them up off the phone the same day. A phone that is lost, reset or replaced takes the whole case with it.
Where a large set has accumulated and it needs to be organised into something usable, our digitisation guide deals with doing that properly — and in this subject an indexed set is the difference between a complaint that reads and one that does not.
The most actionable part of any complaint of this kind, because money leaves a trail that a person does not.
Record what came in — the amount, the date, and the name of the sender as it appears in your bank record, which is frequently nothing like the app’s name. Record what went out — every payment, the amount, the date, and the exact account number or payment identifier it went to.
The identifier money was demanded into is the single most useful line in your complaint. An investigation follows accounts, and an account used to collect from you is an account used to collect from hundreds of others — which is how these operations are actually traced.
Get a proper statement from your bank for the period rather than relying on app screenshots, because a statement is a document and a screenshot of an app is a picture.
Do this before uninstalling, and if you have already uninstalled, do it from the store listing while it still exists.
The exact name and spelling, which is often deliberately close to a well-known one.
The developer or publisher name as the store shows it.
The listed contact address, email and website, captured as a screenshot.
The permissions the listing declares, which is useful corroboration of what it took.
The version and the date you installed it, as far as you can establish.
Any reviews describing the same conduct, which establish a pattern rather than an isolated experience.
These operations rename and republish constantly, which is exactly why a record captured today is worth so much more than a description given in three months. Several of the apps we have been shown no longer exist under the name the victim remembers.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
People file once and wait. File in several places, because each channel does something the others cannot.
| Where | What it does |
|---|---|
| National cybercrime reporting portal, and the 1930 helpline | Puts the matter into the system that deals with this specifically, and generates a reference. |
| Local police, in writing | A complaint on the ground, which is a different thing from a portal entry and is what leads to local action. |
| The regulator | Either a grievance against a regulated lender, or a report of an entity operating without authorisation. |
| The app store | Gets the app reviewed and sometimes removed, which protects the next person. |
| Each platform where content appeared | Takedown, which is the only route that removes the material itself. |
| Your bank | Where payments were taken, or where an account of yours is being used, so that the trail is on record there too. |
Keep every reference number in one list with the date. Six weeks later, when somebody asks what you have done, that list is the answer — and it is also what lets you escalate anywhere that has gone quiet.
This is the first route and it works better than people expect, partly because this category of complaint is well understood by the people handling it.
The helpline number to remember is 1930. It is the national cybercrime helpline, it is free, and it exists for exactly this kind of situation. The online reporting portal lets you file a detailed complaint with your documents attached and gives you a reference to follow.
Call first if you are in distress, and file in writing afterwards. The call is also useful for being told what your state’s process is.
Attach everything rather than describing it. The complaint is only as strong as what is annexed to it.
Keep the acknowledgement and the reference. Everything afterwards starts with it.
Follow up. A complaint that is followed up is a complaint that moves, in this system as in every other.
File even if you think nothing will happen. These operations are dismantled on accumulated complaints, and yours is one of them.
Our cyber crime complaint service prepares and files it, and where money has actually been taken from an account by fraud rather than lent to you, our online financial fraud complaint service covers that different and much more time-critical situation.
Separate from the portal, and worth doing even where the portal complaint has been filed, because a local written complaint produces local action and a local record.
What makes one effective is the same as everywhere else: facts in order, dates, numbers in text rather than only in images, the annexures listed and attached, and a clear statement of what is being complained about — the harassment, the messages to third parties, the circulated material, the threats.
Keep the narrative dated. When you borrowed, when the harassment began, when your contacts were messaged, when content appeared.
List the numbers used, in text, as an annexure.
Name whatever entity you found, and say plainly where you could find none.
Get an acknowledgement of the complaint, with a date and a reference.
Where registration is refused or delayed, that has its own route — our complaint representation service deals with pursuing a complaint that is not moving.
Two different complaints live here and it is worth being clear which one you are making.
If a regulated entity is behind the loan, your complaint is a grievance about its conduct — about how collection was carried out in its name — raised with it first and escalated if it is not dealt with. That has real force, because the entity has something to lose.
If no regulated entity can be found, your complaint is that an unauthorised operation is lending and collecting, which goes to the regulator’s channel for reporting such entities. You will not get your money back through it. What you will do is contribute to an operation being stopped.
Both are worth making and they are not alternatives. We have seen the second produce more practical effect than people expect, because the accounts named in such complaints are what get frozen.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
A step people skip because it feels like it helps nobody. It helps the next person, and it sometimes helps you.
App stores have reporting routes for applications that violate their policies, and policies on lending apps and on permissions have tightened considerably. A report that describes the actual conduct — contacts harvested, third parties messaged, images circulated — is far more effective than a review saying the app is a fraud.
Capture the listing first, then report it. Apps of this kind are removed and republished under new names regularly, and your screenshot of the listing as it was is frequently the only record that the thing you dealt with ever existed under that name.
Where something has been posted or circulated, removal goes through the platform it is on, and it is a separate track from the police complaint — run them at the same time.
Identify every place it appeared — a messaging group, a social platform, a status, a profile picture changed to the image.
Use the platform’s own reporting route for the specific category, because a report filed under the right head moves faster than a general one.
Keep the reference for each report and the date.
Escalate where nothing happens. Platforms operating in India are expected to have a grievance officer, and that is the next step rather than repeating the same report.
Do not engage with whoever posted it. Report, record, and leave it alone.
Our content takedown request service prepares these, including the escalation where the first request is ignored.
A variant that arrives once somebody has stopped paying, and it frightens people who had otherwise held firm.
A call comes from somebody describing themselves as police, or a cyber cell, or a court official. Sometimes there is a video call with a uniform and something that looks like an office. There is a case against you, a warrant, a complaint from the company, and it can all be resolved today if an amount is transferred.
It is false, every time. No police officer asks for a payment on a call, keeps you on a video call, tells you not to speak to your family, or resolves a case by transfer. End the call, do not transfer anything, and add it to your complaint — impersonating a public servant is its own serious matter.
Do not stay on the call to find out more. The method depends on keeping you on it and isolated.
Do not accept a video call from an unknown number in this situation, for reasons that should be obvious given what else is being done with your images.
Tell somebody immediately. The instruction not to tell anyone is the clearest sign of the fraud.
Record the number and the time and report it, because this variant is actively investigated.
If you are genuinely unsure, hang up and contact the police yourself through a number you looked up. A real matter survives a call back; a fake one does not.
Once the pressure begins, requests arrive for more material, and each one is dangerous in a different way.
| What is asked for | What it is for |
|---|---|
| A fresh selfie or photograph | Better material for a doctored image. Never send one. |
| An identity document again | Either a further loan in your name, or sale of the document onwards. |
| A code received on your phone | Access to something of yours. Nobody collecting a debt needs a code on your phone. |
| Bank login or card details | Direct theft. There is no legitimate version of this request. |
| Remote access or screen sharing | Everything on the device, including your other accounts. |
| A video call “for verification” | Recording, which is then used. |
The rule is absolute and it is easier than judging each request: once this has started, you send nothing further of any kind. Not a document, not an image, not a code, not a signature. Everything that is needed for a complaint you already have.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Block as they arrive, and accept that new ones will. That is not a failure of blocking; it is evidence.
Record each number before blocking it, with the date. A list of thirty numbers over two weeks is a powerful annexure.
Do not change your own number as a first move. You will lose contact with banks, employers and the complaint process, and it does not stop messages to your contacts, which is the real problem.
Use the phone’s silencing of unknown callers if the volume is unbearable, and check voicemail or messages once a day rather than reacting hourly.
Do not reply, even once. A reply confirms the number is live and read.
Tell whoever shares your phone — a spouse, a parent — so that they are not the one who answers at ten at night.
The pattern most people report: heavy for the first week or two after they stop engaging, then tapering, then occasional, then gone. The operation moves on because the method has stopped producing. Knowing that it tapers is itself worth a great deal while you are in the first week.
Used constantly, and frequently empty.
Reporting to a credit bureau is something regulated entities do. A great many of these apps are in no position to report anything to anybody, and the threat is simply part of the script. Where a genuine regulated lender is behind the loan, a default can be reported, and that is a reason to deal properly with a genuine debt — not a reason to pay a harasser.
Check your own record rather than believing either side. You are entitled to see it.
Where something wrong has appeared, it is disputed through the proper route — our credit dispute assistance service and our credit dispute guide deal with that.
Where a genuine default is reported, settle it properly and have the record updated after settlement, which is a step people forget.
Do not let the threat drive the decision. A credit record recovers. The spiral described earlier does far more damage than an entry.
Sometimes a real regulated lender is behind it and the money is genuinely owed. That is a better position and it should be dealt with on its own terms, separately from the complaint about conduct.
Get a statement showing the principal, the charges and how the demand is arrived at. You are entitled to understand what you are being asked for.
Negotiate on the record, in writing, with the entity rather than with a caller.
Pay through the proper channel against the proper reference — never to a personal identifier, however it is explained.
Settle or close deliberately, and know which you are doing, because a settlement and a full closure are recorded differently.
Keep the complaint about the conduct alive anyway. Paying what you owe does not forgive what was done.
Our loan settlement documentation service handles a negotiated settlement and our settlement guide explains how such an arrangement should be recorded so that it cannot be reopened.
The step people skip, and then pay for years later when a record still shows an amount outstanding.
When a genuine loan is paid off or settled, obtain a document from the lender saying so — that the account is closed, the amount at which it was closed, and that nothing further is due. Then check, some weeks later, that the record reflects it.
Keep that document permanently. It is the single piece of paper that answers every future question about this episode, including from a bank considering a home loan in five years — and reconstructing it after an entity has changed hands is considerably harder than obtaining it on the day.
Our loan closure documentation service obtains and checks it, and our loan closure guide sets out what such a document has to actually say.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Honest expectations here prevent a great deal of despair in week two.
| What happens | Realistically |
|---|---|
| Your complaint is registered and on record | Quickly, and this matters more than it feels like — it is what everything else rests on. |
| Accounts and numbers are looked at | Over weeks. Payment trails are the part that genuinely gets traced. |
| Content is taken down | Through the platform rather than the police, which is why that track runs in parallel. |
| The messages stop this week | Usually not because of police action. They stop because you removed the leverage. |
| The operation is identified | Sometimes, and more often where many complaints converge on the same accounts. |
| Somebody is arrested | It does happen in this category, and it is not the timescale to plan your own recovery around. |
Which is the argument of this whole page in one line: the things that stop the harassment are the things you do yourself — the permissions, the warning to your contacts, the refusal to pay. The complaints are what make it a matter with consequences for the people doing it, and they are worth filing for that reason, but they are not what gets you through next week.
Day one. Permissions revoked, app gone, evidence captured, your people warned. The worst day, and the one that decides the rest.
Days two to four. Complaints filed — portal, police, regulator, store, platforms. Pressure usually at its highest here, because you have stopped responding.
Week two. New numbers, fresh threats, sometimes the fake police call. This is the test, and it is the point at which most people pay. It is also the point at which paying is most clearly futile.
Weeks three and four. Tapering. Fewer calls, longer gaps, the content already circulated and already ignored by the people who received it.
Month two onwards. Occasional, then nothing. Follow up on the complaints, deal with any genuine debt, check your credit record.
Later. The thing people do not believe in week two: this becomes a thing that happened, rather than a thing that is happening.
This section is here because this particular harassment has driven people in India to real desperation, and because somebody reading it at two in the morning should find something other than procedure.
If you are at that point, please read these few lines slowly. The amount of money involved is almost certainly small — smaller than a month’s rent, in many of the cases we see — and it is being made to feel enormous by people who do this professionally, to thousands of people, using a method they did not invent for you. You have not done anything shameful. You borrowed a small sum from an app that was designed to trap you, which is a thing that has happened to a very large number of ordinary, careful people.
And it ends. That is not reassurance; it is what we see. Once the leverage is removed and the people who matter already know, the campaign stops paying and it stops. The messages your relatives received will be forgotten by them long before you forget them.
Please talk to somebody today rather than carrying this alone — a family member, a friend, anybody. If that feels impossible right now, the government’s Tele-MANAS mental-health helpline is free and available at any hour on 14416, and the national cybercrime helpline is 1930. Both exist for exactly this. Calling one of them tonight is a smaller step than everything else on this page and it is the one that matters most.
And if you are reading this about somebody else — a son, a brother, a colleague who has gone quiet and seems frightened — the most useful thing you can do is tell them, first, that you already know and that you are not angry. The secrecy is the whole of the operator’s power.
Somebody three days in, whose contacts have just started receiving messages. The best time to arrive and the rarest.
A family that found out from a relative rather than from the person it is happening to.
Somebody who has already paid twice and has realised the figure keeps moving.
Somebody with four or five apps stacked on each other and no idea of the total.
A person whose photograph has been circulated, who wants it taken down before anything else.
An employer or a manager asking what to do about messages received about a staff member, which is a good sign about that workplace.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
Screenshots of the messages, with numbers and times visible, as they are — uncropped.
The list of numbers that have called or messaged, in text.
Whatever your contacts received, from them.
The app’s name and listing, and the agreement or approval message if you have it.
Your bank statement for the period, showing what came in and what went out.
How many apps are involved, honestly, including the ones you have not mentioned to anybody.
Nothing needs organising and nothing needs explaining. Send the messages first; they tell us what kind of operation this is and what to file.
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| The three things first | Before anything is drafted, we tell you the permissions step, the evidence step and the message to your contacts — because they matter more than our filings. |
| Evidence into order | Screenshots indexed, numbers listed in text, a dated chronology, the payment trail tabulated. |
| Who is behind it | What the app, the agreement and the money trail disclose, and whether a regulated entity is involved at all. |
| Cybercrime complaint | Drafted and filed, with annexures, and the reference given to you. |
| Police complaint | A separate written complaint for the local police, with the same annexures. |
| Takedown requests | For each platform where content appeared, with escalation where the first request is ignored. |
| Regulator and store | A grievance against the entity where there is one, a report of an unauthorised operation where there is not, and a report to the app store. |
| The record | One sheet with every reference number and date, which is what you follow up with. |
Most of this is complaint and documentation work, and that is what we do. There are three situations where it stops being that.
Where a genuine lender has begun a proceeding against you and something has to be answered. Where the harassment has reached a point calling for an order from a court — against continued publication, or against identified persons. And where what has been circulated has done the kind of damage that is pursued rather than merely reported.
In those situations we say so and point you to the right kind of professional. Our advocate directory lists verified advocates by city and by the kind of matter they handle, so the choice stays with you rather than being a referral.
Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.
Negotiate with them on your behalf. We prepare complaints; we do not deal with the operators, and you should not either.
Ask you to pay anybody to delete content. Takedown goes through the platform and the official channel. Nobody should be paid for it.
Promise that it stops by a date. We can tell you what the pattern usually is. Nobody can promise you a date.
Promise recovery of what you paid. Sometimes money is traced and sometimes it is not, and anybody guaranteeing it is taking advantage of you twice.
Take a share of anything recovered. Our charge is our charge.
Suggest another loan to clear the first. Not from anybody, including a lender we might otherwise think well of.
Tell you to keep it quiet. The opposite is the advice, and it is the one that works.
Backdate anything. Not a complaint, not a chronology, not a covering letter.
Place Order — Free · pay after work
It matters in this subject more than most that the person you call is not making money out of your panic, so the position is worth stating plainly. Our charge begins at ₹2,999 for preparing and filing the complaints, our part runs to 3 – 15 days depending on how much material there is and how many platforms are involved, and the whole figure is settled with you before anything begins. Nothing is taken in advance. We take no share of anything recovered, we never ask you to pay anybody for a takedown, and we will not quote you a higher figure because you are frightened — which is a thing that happens to people in this position and is worth knowing about.
Where several apps are involved, or content has been circulated on several platforms, that is more work and it is quoted as such and said plainly. Where a genuine regulated debt has to be settled or closed, that is separate work with its own figure. Where an advocate is needed, you engage them directly and we take no part of it.
And a word about what you may already have spent. Money paid to these operations is usually gone, and the time to stop is now rather than after the next demand. Nothing in this page is improved by having paid, and nothing in it is closed off by having paid either.
And the part that costs nothing, which in this subject is almost all of it: revoke the app’s access to your contacts, photographs and messages today and then uninstall it; install nothing they send you afterwards, whatever it claims to be; screenshot everything uncropped with the numbers and times visible and keep a copy off the phone; send one short calm message to your family and close colleagues before the app reaches them, because the weapon is shame and shame stops working the moment they already know; never take a second loan to clear the first; send no further document, selfie, identity number or code to anybody; never pay somebody who offers to delete it all for a fee; end any call from somebody claiming to be police and report it; and if this has reached the point where it feels like the end of everything, call 14416 tonight and tell one person — because the amount is small, the harassment ends, and you have done nothing shameful.
If the station treats the harassment as a private matter to be settled, that is not a lawful substitute for registering a cognizable offence. What to say and what to hand over is in FIR guidance — an FIR is not granted, it is registered.
The amount borrowed is almost always small. The thing being used against you is everybody in your phone, and it was handed over at install in a list of permissions nobody reads — which means the question is not how to repay, it is how to remove the leverage. Three things do that, and all three are free. Revoke the app’s access to your contacts, photographs and messages and then uninstall it, and install nothing it sends you afterwards. Screenshot everything uncropped, with the numbers and times visible, and keep a copy off the phone. And send one short, calm message to your family and close colleagues before the operator reaches them — a loan app has my contacts, you may receive abusive messages or a doctored photograph, please ignore them, I have complained — because the weapon was never information, it was shame, and shame stops working the moment the people who matter already know. Then the filings, and we do those: the evidence indexed and the numbers listed in text, a dated chronology, the cybercrime complaint and a separate written police complaint, takedown requests for every platform with escalation where they are ignored, a grievance against the regulated lender where there is one and a report of an unauthorised operation where there is not, and one sheet carrying every reference number. Two things we will say plainly: do not pay to make it stop, because the figure moves and paying proves the method works; and never take a second loan to clear the first, which is how a few thousand becomes a few lakh. Send us the messages — we take no share of anything recovered, we will never ask you to pay anybody for a takedown, and if this has reached the point where it feels like the end of everything, please call 14416 tonight and tell one person first.
Two doors, both free. Clients search a factual directory of enrolled advocates. Advocates apply to be listed on it — no fee, no commission, nothing paid in either direction.
Search Bar Council enrolled advocates by what your matter is about, by court, or by city. Searching and sending a request are both free.
Enrolled advocates anywhere in India can apply to be listed. Your entry is published only after we verify your enrolment number with your State Bar Council.
Would rather not pick anybody? Tell us the matter instead — one form goes to every advocate at once, and the first to take it up calls you.
This directory carries no ratings, no reviews, no rankings and no fees — only the factual particulars the Bar Council of India permits, published at each advocate's own request. Browse the network · Terms for Advocates