## WhatsApp Bans 9,400 in Digital Arrest Crackdown, But Govt. Flagged Only 17 Accounts: MHA Filing
The Ministry of Home Affairs told the Supreme Court on April 28 that WhatsApp banned 9,400 accounts linked to digital arrest scams over a 12-week period beginning January 2026—a figure that dwarfs the 17 accounts the government itself specifically flagged to the platform under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The stark discrepancy raises questions about how the platform arrived at its enforcement numbers and whether the methodology used to identify the bulk of those accounts aligns with government inputs.

The April 28 status report marks the first consolidated public accounting of action taken since the Supreme Court took cognisance of digital arrest scams in October 2025 and ordered a CBI probe in December 2025. Across three rounds of mass bans, WhatsApp has suspended 59,000 accounts in December 2024, 83,000 by March 2025, and 9,400 in the most recent round—totalling over 151,000 bans without any disclosed identification methodology explaining how individual accounts were linked to scam operations. Of roughly 3,800 accounts flagged to WhatsApp across all categories of unlawful content, only 17 were specifically categorised as digital arrest scam related, the filing shows.

The MHA status report does not explain how either the 17 flagged accounts or the 9,400 banned accounts were identified and counted. WhatsApp's Inter-Departmental Coordination Group responses further complicate the picture, as the platform told authorities it had not received sufficient detail on flagged accounts to act on all referrals. The gap between government-flagged inputs and platform-level enforcement outputs signals potential friction over how digital arrest scam networks are defined, traced, and actioned—and whether existing legal frameworks under the IT Act adequately bridge the two.
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- **Source**: Medianama
- **Sector**: The Network
- **Tags**: digital arrest scam, WhatsApp bans, Ministry of Home Affairs, Supreme Court, CBI probe
- **Credibility**: unverified
- **Published**: 2026-04-29 10:57:32
- **ID**: 78186
- **URL**: https://whisperx.ai/en/intel/78186