‘India’s Digital Dream, Hacked’: How We Reported the Story
Using police diaries, mobile-phone records, WhatsApp messages and thousands of banking transactions, we were able to reconstruct—sometimes down to the minute—how “digital arrest” victims were targeted and scammed.
Dr. Ruchika Tandon, in Lucknow, India, was placed under “digital arrest” for eight days in August 2024.
Photographer: Ruhani Kaur for Bloomberg BusinessweekThis project originated in late 2024, as digital arrest scams set a record in India, defrauding victims of 19 billion rupees—about $212 million. Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg’s senior investigative reporter for Asia, who’d lived in India for seven years, recognized that this increase offered a window into how India’s digital transformation had outpaced the nation’s ability to safely navigate a new online world.
Stories of digital arrest victims abounded. Pearson set out to find a case that would illustrate this digital dystopia. She wanted to follow the trail to the alleged scammers; they, as much as the victims, could embody the social, technological and economic failures enabling these heists.