A civil court on Tuesday handed over nine suspects to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on physical remand for an additional two days as investigators continued to probe predatory lending practices following the suicide of a Rawalpindi man who was hounded by staffers of lending apps.

On July 13, the Cybercrime Wing of FIA had initiated an investigation against the apps after the unemployed man ended his life due to “threats” for failing to pay back debts that rapidly ballooned to Rs800,000. On July 15, a judicial magistrate had remanded custody of the nine suspects to the FIA for four days in the online loan scam case.

The suspects were produced in the court of Civil Judge Nosheen Zartaj today after their previous physical remand lapsed.

During the hearing in Rawalpindi, the FIA investigation officer requested the court to grant a further 10-day physical remand of the suspects. However, Judge Zartaj approved an additional two-day physical remand and handed them over to the agency.

The suspects included two call centre representatives, three team leaders, two quality team leaders, and two operational managers. They have been identified as Maaz Talib, Kashan Bashir, Abdullah Waheed, Muhammad Bilal, Husnain Sadaqat, Muhammad Ahmer, Iftikhar Ahmed, Iftikhar Raza, and Haziq Abbasi.

According to Inspector Badar Shahzad Niazi’s application, the suspects were arrested on July 13 — a day after the suicide — and the court had handed them to the FIA on four-day physical remand.

It said that the suspects were allegedly involved in making threatening calls, tampering with evidence, and pressurised customers for loan repayment. The application stated that the probe will cover all aspects to thrash out the role of each suspect in the case.

“Additional remand is necessary to gather more evidence regarding the accused organisations’ systematic use of deceitful tactics, including threatening phone calls, intimidating messages, and unlawful access to personal media files.” the application said.

It requested more time “to complete the technical and cyber analysis of WhatsApp messages, phone calls and seized mobile devices in order to extract all relevant information”.

The application added that “additional remand is required to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the roles of higher-ranking individuals such as the director finance, chief operating officer, deputy director business developer, chief executive officer, and HR manager”.

It also stated that more time was needed to probe the involvement of other phone numbers and to investigate the involvement of individuals associated with the phone numbers registered under Sarmaya Microfinance (Private) Limited and Humraah Financial Services Limited (Zaroorat cash, Bharosa loan, Madadgar).

The application said an extended remand was necessary “to build a stronger case and gather additional evidence to support the charges established under various sections of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 and the Pakistan Penal Code”.

PTA springs into action

On July 17, The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had blocked 43 digital lending apps operating without a license.

The PTA had acted against the apps after directives were issued by the Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Syed Aminul Haque.

In the statement, the ministry had said directions were issued to PTA Chairman retired Maj Gen Hafeezur Rehman to act against illegal loan apps.

Haque had said “strict action” has been started against these apps which are “blackmailing the masses”.

Background

Mohammad Masood, 42, had taken two loans from separate mobile apps, one of which had seen its principal plus interest amass to Rs0.8m, his wife, who wished not to be named, had told Dawn.com.

She had said her husband had lost his job six months ago, leaving the family unable to pay for their children’s school fees and rent.

The wife had recalled that Masood had initially taken a loan of Rs13,000 from EasyLoan app, which quickly soared to Rs100,000 a few days later due to interest.

To pay back that loan, the financially stricken man took another loan from Bharosa app, which also rose to Rs700,000 in a few weeks, she had said.

Dawn.com reached out to the applications for comment but had not received a response by the time this story was published.

Masood’s wife had further said that the apps had initially said that Masood was supposed to pay back the loan with an interest payment of 14 per cent but it “kept on increasing day by day”.

The wife had said that the officials from the app “used to call daily to threaten and scare” the family of police action against them if the loan repayment was delayed.

The wife had added that her husband committed suicide after growing tired of the threats.