Reinforcing the commitment of the Modi government to provide safe and secure digital payments eco-system, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has operationalised the national helpline 155260 and reporting platform for preventing financial loss due to cyber fraud, the Centre said in a statement.

The helpline was soft launched on April 1, 2021. The helpline 155260 and its reporting platform has been made operational by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), with active support and cooperation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), all major banks, payment banks, wallets and online merchants.

The Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System has been developed in-house by I4C to integrate law enforcement agencies and banks and financial intermediaries.

Currently, the number would be operational in seven states and Union territories (Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh). The roll out in the others states for pan-India coverage is underway, the government added.

As per the Centre, the helpline 155260 has been able to save more than ₹1.85 crore of defrauded money from reaching the hands of fraudsters. Delhi and Rajasthan have save ₹58 lakh and ₹53 lakh amount, respectively, the statement said.

The helpline and its associated platform operate on the following workflow:

• Victims of cyber fraud call on helpline number 155260, which is manned and operated by the state police concerned.
• The police operator notes down the fraud transaction details and basic personal information of the caller and submits them in the form of a ticket on the Citizen Financial Cyber Frauds Reporting and Management System.
• The ticket gets escalated to the concerned banks, wallets, merchants and so on, depending on whether these are the victim's bank or the bank or wallet in which the defrauded money has gone.
• An SMS is also sent to the victim with an acknowledgement number of the complaint with direction to submit complete details of the fraud on the national cybercrime reporting portal (https://cybercrime.gov.in/) within 24 hours, using the acknowledgement number.
• The bank concerned, which can now see the ticket on its dashboard on the reporting portal, checks the details in its internal systems.
• If the defrauded money is still available, the bank puts it on hold, that is, the fraudster cannot withdraw the money.
• If the defrauded money has moved out to another bank, the ticket gets escalated to the next bank to which the money has moved out.
• This process is repeated until the money is saved from reaching the hands of the fraudsters.

Currently, the helpline and its reporting platform has all the major public and private sector banks onboard.

The notable ones include - State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Union Bank, IndusInd, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Yes Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.