Supreme Court unleashes CBI on ‘digital arrest’ scammers

The Supreme Court on Monday (December 1, 2025) tasked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to crack down on ‘digital arrest’ scammers and their associates, giving the agency a “free hand” to even launch an anti-corruption probe into the role of banks where mule accounts linked to cybercrimes are found.

A note given by the Union government in the Supreme Court showed that ₹3,000 crore had already been scammed by fraudsters from victims, mostly drawn from the elderly population, through ‘digital arrests’.