Missing phone leads to ₹3.34 lakh theft from Indore labourer’s bank account

A 73-year-old man from Indore lost over Rs 3.34 lakh after his misplaced mobile phone was used to illegally access his bank account via a UPI app, highlighting growing threats linked to lost smartphones and digital banking vulnerabilities.

A 73-year-old labourer in Indore lost more than Rs 3.34 lakh after a missing mobile phone was used to activate a UPI payment app and drain his bank account over five days, according to a complaint filed in the city’s Sanwer police jurisdiction.

Madanlal Chauhan, who lives in Ganesh Colony in Dharampuri, said he misplaced the handset at the Dharampuri weekly market on March 16 and was unable to recover it despite searching for it. He later replaced the SIM card linked to the number, but the theft only came to light when he went to his bank branch to withdraw money and found that his savings had already been depleted between March 16 and March 21, 2025.

Police said the suspect appears to have used the lost phone and the linked SIM to set up a PhonePe account without authorisation, then transferred Rs 3,34,270 from Chauhan’s account. The victim first complained through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, after which Sanwer police registered a case under section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 66D of the Information Technology Act. Investigators are now trying to trace the transactions and identify the person behind them.

The case adds to a growing number of frauds in which thieves exploit lost or stolen phones to get into payment apps and bank-linked accounts. PhonePe advises customers to act quickly after losing a handset by securing accounts, reviewing recent transactions and reporting unauthorised activity, while police in similar cases elsewhere have urged people to block SIM cards and suspend online banking immediately to limit losses.