A note from the editors

Why this matters

In the four years since the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal opened its doors in August 2019, the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre — a unit of the Ministry of Home Affairs — has received well over twenty-three lakh complaints. Through its Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, accessible by dialling 1930, more than seven thousand crore rupees have been intercepted before they could leave the country. The number is large; so, alas, is the number that did leave.

The pages that follow are not a recitation of statistics. They are an attempt — humble, plainly told, and bilingual where it matters — to make ordinary Indians slightly harder to deceive. Each scenario in this handbook is drawn from the patterns most frequently reported to police helplines and consumer-protection cells in 2024 and 2025. The names are imagined; the methods are not.

Particular attention has been paid to the so-called digital arrest — a class of impersonation fraud in which a victim is held captive on a video call by persons claiming to be from the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Enforcement Directorate or the customs service, and is told that money in his or her possession will, by some procedure unknown to law, be 'verified' if transferred to a 'reserve bank account.' The Ministry of Home Affairs has been at pains to remind the public that no such procedure exists, and that no enforcement agency in this country conducts arrests over a video call. In the year 2024 alone, by the I4C's reckoning, more than two thousand crore rupees were lost in this manner; the typical victim was a homemaker, or a senior citizen.

The scenarios collected here are arranged by persona — the role one happens to occupy, in school, at work, in the household — because the fraudster's first task is always to locate the script the victim will believe. A teen will believe a modeling agency; a homemaker, the bank's KYC department; a farmer, the PMFBY claim adjuster. Each persona, accordingly, carries its own characteristic deceptions, and its own characteristic remedies.

The handbook is the slow, printed, library companion to the simulation — the simulation being the swift, mobile, interactive companion to the handbook. The two are meant to be read, and clicked, together.

A note for the reader

How to use this handbook

This handbook may be read in three ways. It may be read in sequence, as one reads a slim book of essays. It may be opened to the persona one most resembles — or the persona of a relative one wishes to protect — and read selectively. Or it may be kept beside the telephone, opened only on those unfortunate occasions when a call has just been received, the heart is racing, and a decision must be made within the next sixty seconds.

1. Choose a persona. Find, in Chapter I, the role closest to your own life — or to the life of the person you intend to instruct. Each persona is a recognised target-class for cyber-fraud.
2. Read a scenario. In Chapter III, the deep dives reproduce the conversation as it actually arrives — by call, by message, by direct mail. Read it as it would be read by the intended victim.
3. Make a decision. Three choices are offered. Choose the one you believe you would, in fact, make.
4. Read the consequence. If your choice was correct, the page will say so. If it was not, the anatomy of the fraud is set out in plain detail, with the path the money takes, the warning signs that were missed, and the steps you ought to have taken instead.
5. Memorise the playbook. Chapter IV — the Justice Playbook — sets out, in eight steps, what is to be done if one has been defrauded. The first twenty-four hours are the most consequential; commit them to memory.

Chapter I

The Nine Personas

A typology of cyber-fraud targets

Fraudsters do not approach the public at large; they approach a person, and, for that approach to succeed, the person must be made to believe a particular story. The story changes with the persona. What follows is a short typology of the nine roles most frequently exploited.

Chapter II

Twenty-Seven Scenarios

A complete index, by persona

Chapter III

Featured Walkthroughs

Nine deep dives — one scenario per persona

What follows is a representative scenario from each of the nine personas. Read each in full — the setup, the choice, and the aftermath. The aftermath is where the lesson lives.

Chapter IV

The Justice Playbook

Eight steps in the Golden Hour

The first twenty-four hours after a cyber-fraud are decisive. The rules that govern customer liability for unauthorised electronic transactions — set down by the Reserve Bank of India in its Master Circular of 6 July 2017 — turn upon precisely how quickly the customer notifies his bank. Reported within three working days, the customer's liability is nil; reported within seven, it is limited; reported beyond seven, the customer is at the mercy of the bank's board-approved policy.

What follows are the eight steps to be taken, in order, by anyone who has been defrauded.

1. 1

   1930 — National Cyber Crime Helpline

   Call 1930 immediately (24×7×365 toll-free, run by MHA / I4C). Keep ready: your bank account number, transaction ID, mode of payment and the scammer's number. The helpline is wired to the 'Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System' — the scammer's account can be frozen during the call.

2. 2

   cybercrime.gov.in — file an online complaint (NCRP)

   File on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal under I4C. Within 24 hours of the 1930 call, upload full details, screenshots and transaction IDs. Save the acknowledgement number — you'll need it for every later step.

3. 3

   Notify your bank — RBI's 'limited liability' rule

   Per RBI Circular dated 6 July 2017 (DBR.No.Leg.BC.78/09.07.005/2017-18) — (i) Reported within 3 working days: zero customer liability; (ii) 4 to 7 working days: limited liability (per RBI table); (iii) beyond 7 days: bank's board-approved policy applies. The bank must credit the disputed amount within 10 working days of notification.

4. 4

   File an FIR at the local Cyber-Crime Cell

   Register an FIR at your district's Cyber-Crime Police Station. Carry the NCRP acknowledgement number. This is mandatory for both legal proceedings and recovery.

5. 5

   Sanchar Saathi (Chakshu) — get the scammer's number blocked

   On sancharsaathi.gov.in/sfc, report the scammer's call/SMS/WhatsApp number through the Department of Telecommunications' Chakshu module. After verification, DoT blocks that mobile connection and handset — protecting future victims.

6. 6

   RBI Integrated Ombudsman — if the bank doesn't resolve

   If the bank doesn't respond satisfactorily within 30 days, escalate at cms.rbi.org.in under the 'Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2021'. This is an independent, free appellate mechanism.

7. 7

   NALSA / DLSA — free legal aid

   Under the Legal Services Authorities Act 1987, weaker sections and cyber-fraud victims are entitled to a free panel lawyer. NALSA Helpline: 15100 (toll-free). Rajasthan residents can directly approach DLSA Balotra / RSLSA Jaipur.

8. 8

   Preserve every piece of evidence

   Every screenshot, SMS, call recording, transaction email, bank statement, scammer's UPI ID and number — keep them in one folder. Delete nothing — they will be needed at every stage in court.

Chapter V

Verified Helplines & Portals

The table that follows lists the principal helpline numbers and online portals maintained by the Government of India for the redress of cyber-fraud and cognate complaints. Each entry has been verified, in May 2026, against the official site of the issuing department. Readers are advised to commit at least the first three to memory.

Sources — Ministry of Home Affairs (I4C), Reserve Bank of India, NALSA, Department of Telecommunications, UIDAI, Ministry of Women & Child Development, SEBI, CERT-In, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare. May 2026.

Chapter VI

DLSA Balotra

Direct local contact for free legal aid

Free legal aid, in cases of cyber-fraud as in all other cases involving citizens of limited means, is a statutory right under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987. Citizens of Balotra district may approach the District Legal Services Authority directly, on the numbers and at the address set out below. The Secretary of the Authority is, at the time of writing, the Hon'ble Shri Siddharth Deep, RJS, to whose Cyber-Security Session at GSSS Jethantri this handbook owes its inspiration.

Chapter VII

The Cyber-Aware Certificate

Upon completing the simulation in full, every reader may, at the press of a button, generate a personally-named certificate, signed digitally by the Principal of the school. A specimen of the certificate is reproduced overleaf, that the reader may know what to expect.