The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Save Them India Foundation to approach the Ministry of Home Affairs or Ministry of Finance, in order to seek action against predatory lending apps. The petition, which highlighted the spate of suicides that have taken place in the last few months through these lending apps, said that since these apps were operated by Chinese actors it is a national security issue, LiveLaw reported. While Google and investigative authorities have been rounding up operators of these illegal apps, and their Chinese owners, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a warning to customers about using predatory digital loan apps and also set up a working group to recommend regulations for digital lending platforms. The PIL filed by non-governmental-organisation Save Them India Foundation, sought the court's intervention to take action against these fake lending apps. The Chief Justice of India S.A Bobde told the petitioner to make a representation to the Home Ministry or Finance Ministry as this was a sensitive matter and not a judicial matter, the report said. According to the report, the plea argues that China is attacking India through various mobile-based apps most of which became active the COVID-19 lockdown, targeting even key members of the legislature, executive and judicial branches of the Indian government. The petitioner said that these apps were stealing data from Indian citizens and selling them on the dark web and were operating without the RBI's approval and were targeting high-risk users in order to provide unsecured…
