Freezing Of Bank Accounts After Cyber Attacks: Allahabad HC Asks Centre To Address Issue

The Allahabad High Court has expressed serious concern over indefinite freezing of bank accounts of people after their identities and personal details are misused by cybercriminals.

A Lucknow bench of justices Rajan Roy and Subhash Vidyarthi on Thursday asked the Centre to devise an effective mechanism to address such cases, observing that gullible citizens should not be left trapped in the aftermath of cybercrimes committed using their details.

The bench impleaded the home ministry in a petition filed by a builder whose bank accounts have remained frozen.

It directed Deputy Solicitor General SB Pandey, appearing for the Union government, to obtain instructions and file an affidavit in response.

The matter will be heard after four weeks.

In its order, the bench said, "We would like the concerned ministries/departments to come-up with a solution to such problems where gullible citizens are caught in a trap by the cyber criminals and their details are used by the latter for committing crimes and the accounts remain freezed indefinitely."

In the petition, the builder submitted that his son had inadvertently clicked on a link sent by a cybercriminal and shared his Aadhar details and other personal information.

The cybercriminal allegedly misused these details to commit further cyber frauds and dupe other citizens through bank transactions.

Consequently, all bank accounts of the petitioner were frozen, severely affecting his business operations.

The petitioner had lodged an FIR in 2020. Earlier, he had approached the high court seeking de-freezing of one of his savings accounts.

The court had then permitted him to approach UIDAI for cancellation of the old Aadhar card and issuance of a fresh one.

Subsequently, fresh biometrics were taken and his mobile number was changed.

However, these measures failed to resolve his problem, as his bank accounts continued to remain frozen.

On the other hand, the banks informed the court that they had contacted the cyber cell but, in the absence of any instructions from it, the freezing of accounts had been discontinued.

The bench directed the banks concerned to contact the cyber cell authorities to ascertain the status of the pending criminal cases and take appropriate action in accordance with law.

It also asked them to make every endeavour to resolve the matter.

The court further directed the petitioner to implead the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), the Lucknow Police Commissioner and the SHO of Vibhuti Khand police station as parties to the proceedings.