The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has blocked about 140,000 mobile handsets which were used in cybercrimes or financial frauds, or were linked to disconnected mobile connections, the finance ministry said in a statement after meeting officials from 12 stakeholders on the issue of rising online financial frauds on Friday.

Since April 2023, about 308,000 SIMs, 50,000 IMEIs, 592 fake links and APKs, and 2,194 URLs have been blocked, the statement said. IMEI, or International Mobile Equipment Identity, is unique to a mobile handset and blocking it means that the device cannot connect to any cellular services. APK is an Android Application Package, an application file type, that allows users to sideload apps without downloading them from the Google Play Store.

Using the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C)’s Pratibimb portal, law enforcement agencies have also arrested more than 500 people engaged in online financial frauds. Pratibimb, which was developed by the I4C and Jharkhand Police and launched in November 2023, plots the live locations of cyber criminals, drawn from their SIM cards, on maps. This allows the law enforcement to track physical movements of criminals, including across state boundaries. During the portal’s pilot in December 2023, it was used to nab 454 criminals in Jharkhand, I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar, had said in January.

In the meeting, which was chaired by financial services secretary Dr Vivek Joshi, the stakeholders discussed how banks and financial institutions are required to phase out regular 10-digit numbers and use specific number series such as those beginning with 140 for commercial and promotional activities, as prescribed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

In the meeting, the officials discussed how to create a standard operating procedure to return funds to the victims from fraudulent accounts. They also discussed the need to onboard banks and financial institutions on the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) platform through API integration, and the need to integrate this platform with the I4C’s National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) to enable better collaboration between banks, financial institutions and police.

The meeting was attended by stakeholders which included senior officials from Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Department of Revenue (DoR), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Department of Telecom (DoT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), TRAI, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), I4C, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Punjab National Bank (PNB) and State Bank of India (SBI).