In a swift action, the police of Hyderabad and Cyberabad on Tuesday arrested 17 people, including several heads of app-based instant loan companies, for their role in lending money at a high interest rate and harassing the defaulters through coercive methods.

Acting on a spate of complaints from debtors, who were allegedly harassed by the lenders, the police during country-wide raids picked up the promoters of several such online-loaning firms and their call centres.

Cyber Crime police of Hyderabad raided two places at Udyog Vihar in Gurugram and three places in Hyderabad resulting in the arrest of 11 people working for Liofang Technologies Private Limited, Hotful Technologies Private Limited, Pinprint Technologies and Nabloom Technologies Private Limited.

All the four companies registered in Bengaluru were being used to persuade, harass and intimidate loan defaulters at various stages, Commissioner of Police Anjani Kumar said.