WhatsApp banned 9,400 accounts linked to digital arrest scams over 12 weeks starting January 2026, but the government’s own inputs flagged only 17 digital-arrest-specific accounts to the platform. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) status report, filed before the Supreme Court on April 28, does not explain how either number was reached, continuing a pattern across three rounds of mass bans: 59,000 in December 2024, 83,000 by March 2025, and 9,400 in this latest round, with no disclosed identification methodology.
The Supreme Court took cognisance of digital arrest scams in October 2025 and ordered a CBI probe in December 2025. The April 28 filing is the first consolidated public accounting of action taken since then.
How WhatsApp identified the accounts: Of roughly 3,800 accounts flagged to WhatsApp under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, across all categories of unlawful content, only 17 specifically related to digital arrest scams. WhatsApp told the Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) it treated each government signal as a seed and mapped outward using three detection tools:
The platform maintains a database of known impersonation assets including profile images, names, and descriptions, to identify new accounts reusing such material. Most scam operations targeting Indian users run from scam centres in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, through clusters of accounts sharing common names, reused media, and coordinated behaviour.
What the government’s role actually looks like: The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), which sits under the MHA, filed the status report through Attorney General R Venkataramani.
MediaNama’s analysis of I4C’s takedown notices found that between March 2024 and April 2025, I4C issued 426 notices under the IT Act targeting 1.10 lakh URLs and accounts, with 78 notices sent to WhatsApp covering over 83,000 accounts and groups. In December 2024, I4C blocked over 59,000 WhatsApp accounts and 1,700 Skype IDs used for digital arrests. By March 2025, the MHA put the WhatsApp account takedown figure at 83,000.
All of these actions use Section 79(3)(b), a provision that only defines when platforms lose safe harbour protection and does not independently authorise content or account removal. The actual power to order takedowns sits with Section 69A, which requires a written order, reasons, and procedural safeguards. By routing actions through 79(3)(b) instead of 69A, the government sidesteps those safeguards entirely. This same gap is now before the Kerala High Court in the MediaOne Facebook page blocking case.
What WhatsApp committed to, and what was already its legal obligation: The status report frames several items as new commitments. Some are not. WhatsApp’s agreement to retain data of deleted accounts for a minimum of 180 days to assist law enforcement is already a requirement under Rule 3(1)(h) of the IT Rules, 2021, not a new concession. The genuinely new commitments are:
Separately, the Department of Telecommunications’ proposed Biometric Identity Verification System (BIVS) for national-level SIM issuance monitoring will take three months to notify rules and six more months to implement, pushing full operationalisation to late 2026.
What the status report does not answer: I4C noted that approximately 80% to 82% of mule accounts used in cyber-enabled financial frauds operate for less than one day, which the government cites as justification for speed. But the status report does not answer:
Three rounds of mass bans, no public explanation of how a single account was identified.
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