Bengaluru: Despite bids to curb the menace of mobile applications that enable one to get an instant cash loan online, more people are falling prey to them.
A Keralite engineering student had to take his life earlier this week here unable to bear the humiliation caused by the racket behind a Chinese lending app.
The father of Tejas, who committed suicide, has alleged that agents of the digital lending app had been constantly threatening his son after he failed to repay the loans that he had taken from them.
The agents had sent morphed nude images of the student to the members of his family. His father, Gopinath Nair, said that he had promised the agents that the money would be repaid.
“They threatened my son saying that his morphed pictures would be sent to the members of his family. They then sent some such images to the family members. I had told them that their money would be returned. But they continued to make threatening calls to him till 6:20 pm on Tuesday. This led to his suicide and we have lost our son," Gopinath Nair said.
Tejas had taken a loan from the Chinese loan app, Slice and Kiss, but could not repay it on time. “Forgive me, Mom and Dad. I have no other way out. I could not repay the loans taken by me. This is my final decision. Goodbye," Tejas wrote in a note that he left behind.
Tejas, a final-year student of Mechanical Engineering at the Nitte Meenakshi College, Yelahanka, was found hanging in a house at Jalahalli in Bengaluru on Tuesday evening.
He had taken loans from three apps without the knowledge of his family.
His friends alleged that after he defaulted on repayment, the app companies began harassing him with a barrage of threatening calls on the phone.
Karnataka Govt mulls curbs
The Government of Karnataka has decided to approach Google with the demand that 42 mobile apps that extend loans unauthorisedly should be removed from PlayStore. These illegal apps charge exorbitant amounts as interest from those who take loans. It is their usual practice to blackmail those who default on repayments, threatening that their morphed images would be circulated among their contacts.
Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao stated in the legislature that a law would be enacted soon in cooperation with the Central Government to check such apps.
