The Supreme Court on Monday lamented that well-educated people are falling prey to digital arrests as it flagged a recent case of an elderly woman who lost her entire retirement benefits in such a case.“It is shocking that well-educated people are getting duped like this,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said after Attorney General R Venkataramani mentioned the suo motu case concerning victims of digital arrest.“An inter-departmental internal meeting has happened. The final meeting will happen soon. We are moving very fast,” Attorney General R Venkataramani said, requesting the Bench to take up the suo motu case for hearing on May 12.The CJI referred to the case of an elderly woman whom he knew in his official capacity. “Unfortunately, her entire retirement benefits have been duped,” Justice Kant said.Agreeing with Venkataramani’s request, the Bench listed the matter for hearing on May 12.Amicus Curiae and senior advocate NS Nappinai said victims often “freeze” when confronted with threatening calls from fraudsters posing as police and enforcement authorities, which made it difficult for them to respond rationally.She suggested that the intermediaries should introduce a “kill-switch” to terminate such transactions. In such a situation, technological safeguards by intermediaries could help prevent irreversible financial losses, she added.Digital arrest is a growing form of cybercrime in which scamsters pose as law probe/enforcement officers, court officials to intimidate victims through audio and video calls; hold the victims hostage and put pressure on them to transfer money.On January 24, the Supreme Court had issued notices to the Centre, the CBI and others on a petition filed by a 78-year-old retired banker who was duped of Rs 23 crore after allegedly being put under “digital arrest” for nearly a month.It had asked the Centre, the CBI, the RBI and others to respond to the petition filed by Naresh Malhotra seeking directions to the banks involved to deposit the defrauded amount of Rs 22.92 crore in his accounts.Expressing serious concern over online fraud and digital arrests to dupe people by fabricating judicial orders, the Supreme Court had on October 17, 2025 asked the Centre and the CBI to spell out their respective stand on dealing with the menace.A Bench led by Justice Surya Kant, which took suo motu cognisance of a shocking case of digital arrest of an elderly couple in Ambala, Haryana, on the basis of forged orders of the top court and probe agencies by fraudsters to extort more than Rs 1.05 crore, had also asked the Haryana government and Superintendent of Police, Cyber Crime, Ambala, to file their responses.Describing the siphoning of more than Rs 54,000 crore by digital frauds as an absolute “robbery or dacoity”, the top court had on February 9 asked the Centre to draft a standard operating procedure in consultation with the RBI, banks and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to deal with such cases.It had expressed grave concern over the “menace” of digital arrest scams and asked banks to play a proactive role in preventing cyber-enabled fraud.The Supreme Court had asked the RBI, the DoT and others to jointly hold a meeting to come up with a framework for providing compensation in digital arrest cases. It said a pragmatic and liberal approach is needed to deal with the award of compensation to digital arrest victims.The top court had directed the CBI to identify digital arrest cases and asked the Gujarat and Delhi governments to accord sanction to the federal probe agency to go ahead with the investigations in the identified digital arrest cases.On December 1 last year, the Supreme Court had ordered a CBI probe into digital arrest scam cases across India and asked the agency to also investigate the alleged role of bank officials in colluding with scamsters to dupe unsuspecting customers.