The Trap: BBC's investigative documentary on deadly instant loan app scam that blackmails with nudes

An undercover investigation by the BBC Eye from the BBC World Service has exposed how scammers are using instant loan apps to entrap and blackmail people across India. The investigation found that, since 2020, more than 60 Indians have taken their own lives after being abused or shamed by loan apps.

Allegations about predatory loan apps have circulated in India for years, but the BBC documentary ‘The Trap’ uses secretly recorded footage to show exactly how this scam works and to expose the people profiting from extortion.

The film includes shocking scenes recorded inside a call centre in Noida, where loan recovery agents use obscene language and threats to frighten customers into repayment. “You can’t even imagine how badly we abuse people,” says one young woman, “blood comes out of their ears.”

Loan apps offer easy money, but many of these apps harvest personal data such as photos and contact lists from customers’ phones, and then use that information for extortion. “Inside every person’s mobile,” says one of the managers at the Noida call centre, “is at least one number that can destroy their life completely.”

The film tells the story of Bhoomi Sinhaa, a lawyer and mother from Mumbai, who was pushed to the edge of suicide after one app, Asan Loan, photoshopped her face onto pornographic images and sent them to every contact on her phone.

The BBC’s reporters identified the man behind Asan Loan, Parshuram Takve, and discovered that he ran a debt recovery operation that routinely humiliated and shamed customers. In 2022, after a suicide linked to this call centre, Telangana police charged Takve with extortion, intimidation, and abetment of suicide. He has absconded. Neither Takve nor Asan loan responded to a request for comment.

Behind Takve, this investigation found a web of companies, including some controlled by a Chinese businessman with operations in Hong Kong. Using secret filming, the BBC captured this man, Li Xiang, admitting that his companies access contact lists from their Indian customers’ phones and use them to recover loans. “It’s as if he’s naked before us,” says Li Xiang, “we know everything about him.” Li Xiang denies wrongdoing and told the BBC that his companies comply with the law, do not access customers’ contacts, and do not run predatory loan apps.

Through powerful human stories and damning visual evidence, ‘The Trap’ reveals the scale and gravity of a scam that is inflicting misery on people across India. More than a year in the making, this documentary was produced, directed, and commissioned by Indian investigative reporters and filmmakers including Poonam Agarwal, Ronny Sen, Nupur Sonar, and Ankur Jain.