In October 2024, Mumbai-based stand-up comedian Ankita Shrivastav received a routine phone call that would turn into an eight-hour ordeal of extortion and psychological manipulation, becoming a stark example of India’s exploding digital fraud crisis. The caller, claiming to represent FedEx, told Shrivastav that police had intercepted a package she had supposedly sent to Iraq containing illegal narcotics. The conversation quickly shifted to what scammers now call a “digital arrest”: the fraudsters connected her to two men posing as uniformed police officers over a video call, who ordered her to comply with their demands while her identity was being verified.
For nearly a full workday, the fake officers controlled Shrivastav through her laptop camera: she was forbidden from turning off the device, leaving her home, or contacting any friends, family, or actual law enforcement. They bombarded her with detailed questions about her personal finances, bank accounts, and transaction history, repeatedly emphasizing the severity of the false charges and the legal trouble she would face if she did not cooperate. Speaking to the BBC, Shrivastav recalled the unrelenting pressure leaving her disoriented and emotionally drained, desperate to end the terrifying experience. By the time the scammers cut contact, she had authorized transfers totaling 900,000 Indian rupees, equal to roughly $9,300, only to realize minutes later that the entire operation was an elaborate scam.
Like many scam victims, Shrivastav faced the added sting of judgment after the incident. “‘You’re educated, how did you get scammed?’ That is what everyone I told asked me,” she said, a question she has repeatedly asked herself. Shrivastav kept her experience private until April 2025, when she turned her trauma into a 30-minute stand-up set uploaded to her YouTube channel, designed to raise public awareness of how easily anyone can fall victim to these schemes.
Shrivastav is far from alone in facing this type of cybercrime. New data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that cybercrime incidents rose nearly 18% year-over-year in 2023-2024, with total losses to digital fraud exceeding 220 billion rupees. Registered cybercrime cases hit 101,928 in 2024, a nearly 50% jump from just three years prior in 2021. Among the most common cons reported nationwide is the “digital arrest” scam, a rapidly evolving tactic where criminals impersonate police or government officials to falsely accuse victims of crimes, trap them in continuous video calls, and intimidate them into transferring funds.
Digital scams extend far beyond fake arrests: fraudsters also deploy fake investment platforms, phishing emails and SMS messages to steal sensitive credentials such as one-time passcodes (OTPs) and account passwords, and increasingly use artificial intelligence to clone voices of loved ones or public figures to extract money. Experts note that while rising reported cases partly reflect improved reporting systems, the trend also underscores a dramatic shift in the nature of criminal activity in India. An editorial in *The Telegraph* framed the NCRB data as a reflection of “the emerging anxieties of a society that is being reshaped by technology, urbanisation and economic change,” noting that new forms of cybercrime are putting unprecedented pressure on India’s overstretched criminal justice system.
For Shrivastav, that pressure has translated to little progress recovering her lost funds. After multiple trips to local law enforcement and banking institutions, she said she has yet to see any results: “The scammers were one step ahead of the police and bank authorities.” NCRB data supports her frustration: by the end of 2024, roughly 100,000 cybercrime cases remained stuck in the investigation pipeline, with close to 75,000 yet to go to trial.
Indian authorities have not ignored the growing crisis. In 2020, the federal government launched the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C), a national body that partners with domestic and international agencies to disrupt cybercrime networks. The government has also rolled out a dedicated 1930 cyber fraud helpline, an online portal for reporting and blocking fraudulent activity, run widespread public awareness campaigns, and updated data protection and technology laws to crack down on deepfake and AI-enabled voice scams. Most recently, Home Minister Amit Shah announced that I4C is collaborating with the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub to leverage artificial intelligence to identify and shut down “mule accounts” – the bank accounts and digital wallets scammers use to launder stolen funds while hiding their identity. India’s central bank is also currently drafting new regulatory measures to target digital scammers.
Even with these interventions, cybercrime rates continue to climb. Journalist and author Soumya Gupta, who wrote *Bharat Bluff: Inside the cons of India’s internet revolution*, explains that the rapid expansion of internet and smartphone access across India has put hundreds of millions of new users at risk. Recent government data shows that more than 86% of Indian households now have internet access, but digital literacy initiatives have failed to keep pace with this boom. While public awareness campaigns and media reporting are slowly closing that gap, Gupta emphasizes that scamming relies far more on psychology than technology.
In her writing, Gupta notes that scammers build schemes to exploit universal human vulnerabilities: fear, greed, core beliefs, and social connections. Once a victim is pulled into a scam, many struggle to extract themselves, either out of shame to admit their mistake or due to the sunk-cost fallacy that keeps them complying as more money is on the line. Scammers also closely track users’ online activity to craft personalized cons that feel credible and compelling to their targets.
For Shrivastav, the scammers exploited two deep-rooted vulnerabilities: a cultural fear of police authority and a desire to protect her public reputation as a comedian. “From a young age, we’re taught to be afraid of the police and to obey authority. That ingrained fear overrode the alarm bells that were ringing in my brain,” she explained. “I was also eager to prevent any incident that would spoil my reputation among fans.”
Sharing her story through stand-up comedy felt like a risky, vulnerable step – she worried audiences would judge her as foolish for falling for the scam. But she said the choice to go public was necessary: “I wanted people to know that if I – an educated, urban woman who considers herself to be street-smart – could get scammed, it could happen to anyone.”
Gupta echoed Shrivastav’s call for caution, urging internet users to carefully protect their personal data online and follow two core rules: any offer that seems too good to be true almost certainly is, and if a situation feels off, stop all communication and reach out to a trusted source or official authority for help.