trAPPed
Arrested by phone — a true story
(text version)
A comic panel of a pressure cooker, sounding: FWEEETTTT. A woman is in her kitchen with a glowing phone on the counter. She chops vegetables. She looks nervously to the side. Narration: “The phone watches her all the time. Even when she cooks.” She stirs a pot. The woman stands in front of the phone holding her plate. It looms over her. The voice on the other end of the line says: “Now you can eat.”
Graphic novel title: trAPPed. The word is stylized as if it is coming out of the phone.
A city scene fades in. Clouds in the sky, birds soaring. A busy street, packed with cars, scooters and people walking by, is bathed in sunlight. Narration: “Lucknow, in northern India, has four million people. Ruchika Tandon grew up here. Her life before this week — before she got the call — had the feel of clockwork.” A woman sits at the edge of a pool. Narration: “For two hours every morning, it’s … Twenty-five meters, turn. Twenty-five meters, turn.” The woman swims in both directions. We see her come up for air.
Narration: “Then the lab coat goes on. For 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, Ruchika, a neurologist, treats epilepsy patients, stroke patients, patients with Parkinson’s.” The woman stands in the hospital, looks at scans, takes notes on a patient’s case. Narration: “Then it’s home to her son and mother.” She walks home in the evening. The windows in her neighborhood are aglow. The scene shifts to her living room, with her keypad phone in the foreground. Narration: “She hasn’t seen a movie in years.”
The phone rings. She walks over to it and picks up. Caller on the phone: “Dr. Ruchika Tandon?” Ruchika: “Yes?” Phone: “This is Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. We have received 22 complaints against your number. The police want to talk to you. I’ll transfer you now.” Ruchika looks worried. Phone: “This is Officer Rahul Gupta — Central Bureau of Investigation.” Narration: “She’s being investigated. For money laundering, he says. They need to speak to her on video. On Skype. Or she will go to jail.” Ruchika, more nervous now, tries to explain herself. Narration: “Her phone doesn’t have Skype — or any apps at all, Ruchika tells him. It’s a keypad phone. An antique.”
The scene fades out. We see sky. Then, a busy intersection with a commercial building looming in the background. The voice on the other end of the phone says: “Then you will have to buy another phone. Now.” Ruchika enters the mobile phone store. She still has her old phone pressed up against her ear. She buys a new one. She stares down at it, her old phone still up to her ear. Narration: “If Ruchika does as she’s told, the officer says, she can stay home while the police investigate.” The new phone turns on, her finger hovers over the Skype app, hands shaking.
The voice on the other end of the phone tells her: “You are now under digital arrest.” The phone’s screen bears the logo of the Central Bureau of Investigation. Rahul Gupta’s officer number is visible. Messages begin to pop up — ding! ding! ding! – as Ruchika opens a document titled TERMS OF DIGITAL CUSTODY. Phone: “You must follow these conditions.” She scrolls through the long list. There are dozens of rules. #10: “The suspect must inform surveillance personnel of any visitors before they arrive.” #12: “The suspect must remain visible to the surveillance cameras at all times.” #43: “The suspect must not engage in any behavior that could be interpreted as attempting to escape.” There are at least 70. She feels overwhelmed. It makes her head spin. The floor falls away from under her feet.
Narration: “Later that evening, a new officer introduces himself. He says he’s Vijay Khanna with the Mumbai police. She needs to answer a psychological questionnaire. With 500 questions.” There are multiple small panels showing Ruchika’s face, at times distressed, at times bewildered, answering the questions as the time ticks by on her analog wristwatch. Phone: “How do you handle stress? How do you deal with failure? What is your greatest strength? How important is it for you to be liked by others? What are you most proud of? What is the greatest challenge you have faced? Do you prefer spending time alone or with others? Are you usually on time or running late? What is your biggest fear?”
DAY 2
Ruchika is asleep in bed. She opens her eyes to see the phone watching her. Narration: “Ruchika doesn’t like lying. Or keeping secrets. She calls out sick from work.” She sits on the bed, bathed in the phone’s glow. A figure, a boy, is in the foreground at the door. Narration: “Her son, who is 11, wants to see her new phone. But she can’t let him know the trouble she’s in. She avoids him. She keeps to herself.” Ruchika is crying now, right into her new phone. Phone: “You shouldn’t cry so much, you’ll irritate people.”
Narration: “The officer tells her that she needs to go to court — virtually. She should wear a white dress. To show respect to the judge.” The scene fades to black. Ruchika stands in front of the phone in her darkened living room, hands folded neatly in her lap. She’s wearing a white dress. Narration: “She doesn’t see the court… but she hears the sounds of court.” Images show what’s in Ruchika’s mind’s eye as she listens: The chattering of crowds, the “WHACK!” of a gavel, the click-clack of a clerk typing. A voice on the phone calls: “Case number 188.” Narration: “And she hears a judge — the highest in the country, from what her phone says — asking if she’s connected to an Indian businessman accused of money laundering.” Judge: “Do you know Naresh Goyal?” Ruchika: “No.”” Judge: “We have your recording.” Ruchika, head bowed: “I don’t recall. He may have been a patient. Sometimes patients call and talk to me.” Judge: “It was about money.” The judge makes a ruling. The gavel comes down. Narration: “He orders Ruchika to transfer all of her funds into a Secret Supervision account.”
Fade to white. Ruchika is in her kitchen when she hears: “DING DONG!” Narration: “There is a visitor at the door. It’s Ruchika’s uncle. Her mother lets him in.” Phone: “You can’t talk to him. He can’t see you.” Ruchika looks alarmed. She starts to run. She gets down onto the floor. Narration: “Ruchika scrambles for a place to hide.” She gets under the bed. She gazes up from the darkness. Only a faint glow from the phone illuminates her face.
DAY 3
Narration: “Ruchika was raised to follow the rules. She was a class topper in school. She has never been to a police station in her life.” Ruchika is crying as she asks: “Who has accused me? I’m not an important person.” She wipes away tears. The phone, with the Mumbai Cyber Crime logo now on its screen, glows in the foreground. Phone: “Someone has named you. It doesn’t matter who. It could be someone on your staff. One of your patients. Someone at the bank.”
Ruchika, in a printed dress, walks through a crowd, phone in hand. Narration: “Ruchika has accounts with five banks. They hold the savings from three generations of her family — about 25 million rupees in all. (About $300,000.)” The phone’s familiar glow is visible as she walks into a bank. She sits down with a bank manager, who asks: “Ma’am, are you sure? Why so much?” A message on her phone says: “Tell him you’re buying property.” Her hands shake. Bank manager: “What about a home loan instead? That way you’ll still have some money to draw on. No? Then you’re sure. 10 million rupees?” Ruchika: “Yes.” Narration: “She makes her first transfer. And she heads to a second bank.” At the next bank, she is sitting across from another figure who says: “Are you sure? 4.5 million rupees?” As she leaves the bank, she is looking down at her phone.
DAY 4
Narration: “For years, Ruchika has been taking guitar lessons. Her son takes dancing lessons. Today they have a recital. Her son goes. She stays home, under surveillance.” Ruchika, in profile, is sitting in her living room, facing her phone. Her son leaves through the door in the background. The voice on the phone says: “I know you wanted to go. The songs you were going to play tonight? Why don’t you play them now.” Ruchika hesitates for a moment, then picks up her guitar and starts playing. She says: “One song was going to be ‘Give Me Some Sunshine.’” She strums, facing the phone. Narration: “The officer on the phone joins her.” They sing together. Ruchika gazes at the phone with a funny look on her face. Narration: “She thinks his voice is terrible.”
DAYS 5-8
Narration: “Another court hearing. Ruchika says she couldn’t get all the money at once. So many accounts. So many banks.” She is standing in front of the phone again. Narration: “The judge gives her another day.” Ruchika starts the long march up a set of stairs to another bank. Then, she goes to more banks. She’s in a crowd, phone in hand as usual. Narration: “She makes more transfers.” Messages flash across her phone screen confirming her debits: 1.5 million rupees, 4 million rupees, 1.5 million rupees, 1.2 million rupees. Narration: “The court has pledged her funds will be returned if found clean.”
The scene fades into the next day. Ruchika is asleep in front of the phone. Phone: “We’ll give you one last extension. You have until 4 today.” She looks tired, ragged. A traffic jam unfolds. The cars beep and honk at each other. Narration: “She has just a few hours.” Ruchika is in her car, driving while the phone watches her. Narration: “She’s flustered, distracted.” An oncoming bus beeps loudly. Narration: “A bus clips her mirror.” We see the broken side-view mirror. Narration: “But she makes it.”
A small bank building stands alone in the foreground. Ruchika makes a long trek from the parking lot to the bank. Narration: “By day’s end, she transfers another 2.1 million rupees.”
Narration: “Ruchika has a little savings left, but she can’t access the money right away.” She is sitting slumped against a wall. The phone is propped up in front of her. Narration: “Vijay Khanna, the officer who sang with her, the officer who seemed to sympathize with her, tells her: If you can’t get it, borrow from someone.” For the first time, Ruchika looks angry as she glares at the phone. She says: “I’ve never borrowed money. And there’s no one to borrow from.”
DAY 9
Narration: “With no more money to move, the voices on her phone go away.” Ruchika is in bed again. She wakes up, rubs her eyes. The phone sits in front of her, but its glow is gone. She picks it up, now lifeless in her hands. Narration: “Ruchika wonders what to do next.” She stares off into the distance. The sun shines through her window.
Narration: “Then she gets ready for work.” Ruchika stands in front of the mirror in her bathroom, buttoning up her coat. As she steps out onto the street, the sky above is vast, birds are flying overhead. She exhales. Then, she’s back in the hospital, talking to patients.
DAY 10
Ruchika is sitting in front of a computer. Its glow envelops her. Narration: “Ruchika keeps thinking about what she’s been through. By now, she feels safe enough to search for answers.” She types on her keyboard: “digital custo…” Suggested searches come up. One says “digital custody scam.” Then the results: news stories, advisories, other links. They suggest people are being duped and losing their money. In front of the computer screen, she holds her head in her hands.
A long black sky reveals a building. Ruchika is walking up to it. The sign on the front reads: Cyber Crime Police.
Oct. 27, 2024
Narration: “Two months after Ruchika learned she had been scammed, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi makes his monthly national address.” Modi: “My dear countrymen, let me play an audio for you.” Phone voice: “Hello … We have 17 complaints against this number.” Modi is on screen again. He says: “The conversation you just heard is of a digital arrest fraud.” Narration: “Modi explains how the fraud works: The scammers pretend to be police. They know everything about you. They scare you. Use psychological pressure. Say you must act now. Give you no time to think.”
A crowd of people, some holding umbrellas, many on their phones, stands in front of a sign that reads: Aadhaar Seva Kendra. Narration: “It was Modi’s government, in 2015, that helped fuel India’s digital revolution. At stunning speed the personal data of hundreds of millions of people went online, including their unique, 12-digit Aadhaar numbers. Security was lax — and hackers and scammers took advantage.”
The scene fades out. It transitions back to night sky. There’s a cityscape, Lucknow again. Narration: “This year Bloomberg reporters investigating these scams discovered a fraud kit online, with scripts and instructions on how to put someone under digital arrest. It can be bought for $9.99.” Wires crisscross the sky. Cars, trucks, people move down the street. Narration: “They also discovered more than a dozen spreadsheets of potential victims.” The crowd begins to thin as people walk down the street. Narration: “One had 10,000 entries. Another was all doctors.” Fewer and fewer figures are on the street now. Narration: “It included a familiar name.” A small, single figure is left in the scene. She walks towards the viewer. Narration: “Ruchika Tandon.”
End.
Tomorrow: Bloomberg investigates the people on the other end of the phone and the forces in India that have allowed “digital arrest” scams to thrive.