Mumbai: We WFH, never abused anyone, say loan app agents

The five accused have told the police that they don’t know who their employer was. File pic

Calling themselves pawns in a bigger game, five loan app recovery agents arrested by Maharashtra cyber officers told the Killa court on Monday that they had no idea about the torture of borrowers and that they were told to make follow-up calls and send messages asking customers to repay on time. The family of one of the accused said he had joined just two days before his arrest. All five men were arrested from Karnataka on June 11. Their advocate Rajesh Khobragade said the SIM cards given to them had been used by their colleagues who might have resorted to abusive behaviour.

"My clients were just employed on Rs 12,000-Rs 15,000 salary and their job was to send simple messages and make calls reminding loan borrowers before the due date. None of them has sent a single abusive message and called any loan borrowers using foul language. All of them were hired to work from home, and every day the employer used to send links where they used to log in and take details of the loan borrowers to make calls and send messages. They used to make 9-10 calls daily on the numbers of loan borrowers given to them," Khobragade told mid-day. The accused said they have no idea who their employers were.

The advocate disagreed with the police's claim that trails of abusive messages were recovered from the mobile phones of his clients. "The SIM cards provided by their employers were rotated among other people, so we don't know who was sending abusive messages and morphing photographs, but we are not the real culprits. We were just jobless people and got an opportunity to work from home and earned some to support our families," the accused told the court through their advocate. All the accused are well-educated and were jobless due to COVID, he said.

One of the arrested agents is Suhail Sayyed, 24. His father Nasiruddin Sayed said, "My son completed his MBA in Finance and Marketing just before the lockdown and was looking for a job. For the last few months, he had been working from home and I had never seen him making a single call to anyone where he used foul language. We are not even aware of what is happening. I only know that my son is innocent, the police will also realise this but his life has been destroyed due to this arrest. The police should have verified the facts before arresting them." Anti-cybercrime officers said Sayyed was a supervisor and had hired the other accused, though he claimed that all of them were hired by one Asim Khan who has gone into hiding.

Another arrested accused, Mohammed Kaif Kadari, too, claimed innocence. "He was in his second year of computer science and to support his family he had started working from home just two days before his arrest. He had absolutely no idea about the scam and was just doing his job and never made any calls using abusive language or sent any message by morphing anyone's pictures," said
Shahid Inamdar, brother-in-law of Kadari.

Accused Muftiaz Peerzade's father Sayyed Peerzade offered a similar version. "I sell watermelons in my area, I have worked hard to provide good education to my son and he recently completed his BCom. He was looking for a job but due to COVID, things were getting delayed. On June 1, he joined this company and was working from home. On June 11, the police came and arrested him without verifying the fact. Now, his entire career is at stake," the father told mid-day outside the court, breaking into tears. The court sent the five accused to judicial custody, for 14 days, after the cyber cops didn't press for their police remand.

11 June
When the five were arrested from Karnataka