Spotlight back on Ggm's illegal call centres after 38 held in bust

gurugram: The city's thriving industry of illegal call centres is once again in the spotlight — this time after the police on Saturday busted one being run from Gurugram's Udyog Vihar and arrested 38 people. The police found that the call centre was blackmailing hundreds of citizens to pay up the money they had borrowed from Chinese online banking applications.

Such was the brazenness of this call centre that they apparently tried to morph the images of the persons they called into pornographic content to threaten their targets with it.

But while the Gurugram Police and its cyber team bagged another illegal call centre, the wave of these call centres springing up started nearly a decade ago.

For close to seven years now illegal call centres have continued to thrive in Gurugram. A white-collar crime that has been a major source of making quick money, it has allured several young qualified engineers with the technical prowess to take the risk and be on the wrong side of the law.

For many unemployed English-speaking youths, these centres have also provided employment opportunities.

In 2021, there were 18 illegal call centres that were duping not only Indian nationals but even nationals from the United States and the United Kingdom, the Gurugram Police found after they broke these centres up. The technical efficiency with which illegal call centres have functioned can also be gauged from the fact that concerns of such call centres have also been raised in the past by investigating authorities in the US with Gurugram Police.

The illegal call centres from Gurugram have also found international infamy after one YouTuber based in the UK did a sting operation on one of these in March 2020 and published his findings in a UK daily. Following this sting operation, the Gurugram Police arrested the founder who was in his mid-20's.

The modus operandi, as has been done in several other call centres, was to first install a virus in systems of several foreign nationals and then on the basis of providing service, charge exorbitant amounts of money from such victims.

The technical complexity in this form of crime has resulted in the entry barrier being high and only those with the proper technical skills and good conversation skills make it big in this form of white-collar crime.

Saturday's bust in Udyog Vihar found that it was collaborating with Chinese online banking apps and also highlighted the dangerous turn that many of these call centres are now taking.

Immediately after the first phase of the lockdown in 2020, the Hyderabad Police had caught a similar case where Chinese online banking apps were found indulging in predatory lending — affecting thousands of middle-class and poor residents, who had lost jobs and incomes due to the Covid outbreak.

These residents were forced to return the money they had borrowed and were being blackmailed continuously. This also resulted in some citizens later deciding to end their lives.

Even then, it was highlighted how several call centres in Gurugram collaborated with these Chinese online banking apps and made huge amounts of money through commissions.