The loan app that is suspected to have trapped the four-member family at Valiya Kadamakkudy in a vicious cycle of debt and humiliation leading to their tragic death remains yet to be identified.
Though the Varapuzha police have launched a probe in that direction, tracking down the loan app and those behind it is unlikely to be an easy task going by the past incidents involving such dubious apps.
The police have collected mobile phones of three persons who had received messages from the app implicating one of the victims for non-payment of loan with a threat to send her morphed pictures to more people in her contacts list unless the loan was settled. In fact, it is learnt that some contacts had already received such pictures. A relative, a friend, and an ASHA worker had so far received the message to the knowledge of the police.
“We have recorded the statements of all three persons. However, the text messages had been delivered from numbers either using VPN masking the exact geographical location or were Internet calls leaving little trail to track them down. One of the calls was seemingly made from Sri Lanka though even that cannot be conclusively proved,” said a senior official with the Ernakulam Rural police.
The mobile phones of the victims have been submitted before court on Thursday to be despatched for cyber forensics in Thiruvananthapuram for recovery of data without any loss. Only after examining the phones, which remain locked, it could be verified whether the victims had received similar intimidating text messages from the loan app.