Multi-channel reporting, awareness drive important to curb cyber crime, says Lucknow police

Amid rise in cyber fraud activities with multiple attempts and cases of digital arrest registered in the last few weeks across Uttar Pradesh, the Lucknow police officials on Wednesday (December 31, 2025) pushed for multi-channel reporting, awareness drive, rapid blocking of accounts and reach out to vulnerable population as safety protocol to curb the threat. “Yes, threat of digital arrest is increasing where scammers call people and place them in digital arrest. Since AI Voice and Video spoofing is going to increase risk in the future people need to do Independent verification by calling official police, bank helplines, not the number that called them,” told Vineet Singh, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), Law and Order, Lucknow to The Hindu.

Recently, in the third week of December the Vikas Nagar police in Lucknow were successful in a cyber rescue, foiling a ₹1.3-crore digital fraud when the victim, 75-year-old women saved from being duped when frauds put her under a ‘digital arrest’ for over four days. “When the bank alerted us, we acted insistently to foil the attempt of cyber fraud’s as criminals were trying to extract the entire savings of the woman by psychologically tangling the lady by posing as CBI officials for four days and keeping her under digital arrest,” said Alok Kumar Singh, Station House Officer (SHO), Vikas Nagar police station.

On asked how people can save themselves from such digital frauds, Mr. Vineet replied awareness is the key and knowledge about that fear tactics like “you’ll be arrested etc. are regarded as red flags. “People must know that authorities don’t do enforcement via WhatsApp/video calls. There is a need to encourage platforms and banks to share threat intelligence, so suspicious accounts/links are proactively blocked. Digital Awareness Tools like Expand campaigns demonstrating how to spot fake apps, fraudulent UPI prompts, and scam stores — online toolkits, short videos, and games can reinforce these skills,” said Mr. Singh.

The ACP also pushed for implementing 112 WhatsApp bot kind of system which gives protection against such cyber criminals. “People also need to recognise common scam red flags like urgent demands for payment, requests for sensitive data (OTP/PIN), too-good-to-be-true offers, and unknown links/messages,” he added.