VIJAYAWADA: In the wake of increasing number of harassment cases for loan recovery, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday directed officials to take stringent action against the errant mobile app-based private lending agencies.
The Chief Minister said a strict vigil should be kept on the activities of online call money organisers and app-based agencies who lend money at an exorbitant interest rate and resort to dubious means for loan recovery.
Meanwhile, Director General of Police D Gautam Sawang said a special drive will be conducted across the State to curb the excesses of app-based lending agencies. During an interaction with media persons on the sidelines of an official programme at Mangalagiri on Tuesday, the DGP said, “We came to know that most of these app-based lenders are based at Noida, Gurugram and New Delhi and the call centres of a few lending agencies are located in Hyderabad and Gurugram.
Stringent action will be taken against the errant lenders after conducting a detailed inquiry into the matter from all the angles.” Sawang appealed to the people to lodge a complaint with police through AP Police Seva or Dial 100 and 112 against the lending agencies if they face any harassment for repayment of loans. According to official sources, a 22-year-old MBA student died by suicide in Visakhapatnam on November 3 following her failure to repay the loan taken from an app-based lender. Meanwhile, several complaints are also being filed by the victims in various police stations in the State against the lenders for resorting to harassment for loan recovery.
2 more cases filed
Two more cases of harassment by app-based lenders were reported in Krishna district. The cases were registered in Gudur and Bandar taluka police stations and they were transferred to the CID, Krishna District SP M Ravindranath Babu said.