Official data obtained under the Right to Information Act has exposed the widening gap between how much money cybercriminals are stealing from Bathinda residents and how little of it is ever recovered. Between 2018 and May 15, 2026, police in the district received 12,660 cyber fraud complaints involving losses of ₹42.71 crore, of which victims have recovered only ₹3.14 crore, leaving nearly ₹39.57 crore permanently gone. In effect, just about 7 percent of all defrauded money has made its way back to victims.
A Backlog Growing Faster Than Complaints Can Be Cleared
Of the 12,660 complaints filed, 10,153 have been disposed of, while 2,507 remain pending. The pending caseload is concentrated overwhelmingly in the most recent years: of 3,010 complaints registered in 2025, 1,777 are still unresolved, and of the 996 complaints filed by mid-May 2026 alone, 730 remain under investigation. That pattern suggests the pace of incoming complaints has begun to outstrip what local cyber cells can realistically process.
The year-wise trend line makes the scale of the shift unmistakable. Bathinda recorded just 69 cyber fraud complaints in 2019; that figure climbed to 493 in 2020, 847 in 2021, 1,788 in 2022, 2,434 in 2023, and 3,023 in 2024, before settling at 3,010 in 2025. Already, 996 complaints had been registered by mid-May 2026, putting the district on pace to match or exceed the previous year’s total well before its end.
A Recovery Rate That Mirrors a National Problem
Bathinda’s roughly 7 percent recovery rate is not an outlier. Odisha’s own government figures show a similarly bleak picture at much larger scale, with 76,794 victims losing ₹712 crore over an 18-month period through late 2025, of which only about ₹8 crore was refunded, even after accounting for the ₹92 crore that authorities managed to freeze in suspect accounts before withdrawal. The consistency of these low recovery percentages across different states points to a structural weakness in India’s fraud response, rather than a problem specific to any one police force or district.
Cybercriminals operating in and around Bathinda rely on the now-familiar toolkit driving this national surge: impersonating bank officials, requesting personal details under the pretext of KYC updates, offering fake high-return investment schemes, advertising fraudulent online jobs, hijacking social media accounts, stealing OTPs and UPI PINs, and persuading victims to install screen-sharing applications. Once money is transferred, it typically moves through multiple bank accounts and digital wallets within minutes, a layering technique that makes recovery significantly harder the longer a victim waits to report the crime.
A researcher at Algoritha Security said cybercriminals constantly refine their tactics, exploiting fear, urgency and greed to manipulate victims into acting before they can verify a claim. The researcher stressed that banks, government agencies and payment service providers never ask customers to disclose OTPs, UPI PINs, CVV numbers or internet banking passwords over a phone call or message, and urged people to independently verify any unsolicited communication before sharing financial information. Cybersecurity experts add that the first few hours after a fraud are the most critical window for recovery, and advise victims to report incidents immediately through the National Cyber Helpline at 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, since prompt reporting significantly improves the odds of freezing fraudulent transactions before the money disappears beyond reach.
