Food Orders, OTPs and FASTags: How Digital Trails Are Rewriting Criminal Investigations in India

The arrest of Ravindra Soni — the alleged mastermind behind the ₹1,000-crore BlueChip Group investment scam — did not come from a dramatic police chase or months of physical surveillance. It came from a food delivery order. Picked up at his doorstep in Dehradun while receiving what he believed was a routine meal, Soni’s capture illustrates a deeper transformation underway in policing: crime-solving in the age of digital residue.

From food-delivery logs and one-time passwords (OTPs) to toll data and e-commerce histories, the everyday conveniences of digital life are increasingly doubling as investigative tools, quietly reshaping how law enforcement tracks fugitives and dismantles complex criminal networks.

The BlueChip Con: A Global Scam, an Ordinary Mistake

Ravindra Soni moved to Dubai in 2010 after completing his MBA in Delhi. In 2021, he launched the BlueChip Group, projecting it as a forex and commodities trading firm dealing in gold, oil and metals. Investors from India, the UAE, Malaysia, Canada and Japan were drawn in.

By 2024, investigators concluded that the company was a shell. BlueChip had allegedly vanished with investors’ money, with the suspected fraud estimated at up to ₹1,000 crore. Soni fled, evading authorities in Dubai for nearly a year, before returning to India. On November 30, police traced him to Dehradun — not through traditional surveillance, but through the digital footprint of a food-delivery transaction.

Why Digital Residue Has Become Powerful Evidence

The BlueChip case is part of a broader pattern. In modern investigations, suspects may change phones, SIM cards, hotels and cities, but they rarely abandon apps that make daily life functional. Each interaction — placing an order, receiving an OTP, crossing a toll plaza — leaves behind metadata that can be legally accessed and cross-referenced.

In a ₹5,300-crore GST fraud uncovered last year, investigators reconstructed an entire network of fake firms and fraudulent tax credits by analysing OTPs generated by food-delivery platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato, alongside SMS alerts from FASTag toll transponders. Suspects kept phones switched off for long periods, activating them briefly only to receive OTPs — a pattern that ultimately exposed them.

How Apps Helped Track Mobile Criminal Networks

FASTag data proved particularly valuable. It allowed police to track the movement of high-end vehicles used by suspects along the Delhi–Noida–Lucknow corridor. Combined with delivery-app logs, it helped triangulate physical presence even when identities were masked.

A similar approach was used in October, when the Delhi Police dismantled a ₹22 lakh cyber fraud network. Over nine days and 1,800 kilometres across four states, investigators linked data from WhatsApp, Flipkart, Swiggy and Zomato to identify seven accused. While WhatsApp data revealed overseas coordination from Malaysia, delivery-app footprints exposed local movements that suspects believed were invisible.

Why Companies Can Share User Data with Police

Such data-sharing is usually enabled by clauses buried in platform privacy policies. For instance, Zomato’s policy explicitly allows sharing user data with law enforcement agencies to investigate or prevent illegal activities or to comply with legal processes. Similar provisions exist across most digital platforms.

This means that while users experience apps as private conveniences, legally they operate within a framework where data can be disclosed under due process — a reality that many remain unaware of.

From Financial Fraud to Violent Crime

The evidentiary role of digital footprints is no longer confined to financial crime. In the United States, prosecutors investigating the devastating 2025 Palisades Fire in California cited interactions with ChatGPT — including prompts about starting fires and AI-generated imagery — as part of the broader evidentiary chain linking the accused to the blaze that destroyed over 23,000 acres.

Globally, digital behaviour is increasingly being treated not as peripheral context, but as admissible behavioural evidence.

India’s Regulatory Shift on Digital Identifiers

The rise of such cases coincides with growing regulatory intervention. According to government data, cybersecurity incidents in India rose from 10.29 lakh in 2022 to 22.68 lakh in 2024. Cyber fraud losses reported on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal touched ₹36.45 lakh by February 2025.

In response, the Department of Telecommunications has directed messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal to enforce SIM-to-device binding — ensuring accounts remain continuously linked to the SIM used for registration. This power flows from the Telecommunication Cybersecurity Amendment Rules, 2025, notified in October.

The Expanding Scope of ‘Telecommunication Identifiers’

A key concept introduced in the new rules is the Telecommunication Identifier User Entity (TIUE). Any non-telecom entity that uses identifiers like mobile numbers to authenticate users can fall under this category.

While the current directive targets messaging apps, experts note that the definition could extend to food-delivery platforms and e-commerce services as well — since they rely on phone numbers for onboarding and verification. If applied broadly, this would formally integrate large segments of India’s digital economy into the law enforcement ecosystem.

Convenience, Surveillance and the New Policing Reality

What the BlueChip case ultimately highlights is a structural shift. Policing is no longer about following suspects alone; it is about following data. Convenience-driven digital ecosystems generate continuous behavioural maps that are hard to erase, even for sophisticated criminals.

For citizens, this raises unresolved questions about privacy, proportionality and oversight. For law enforcement, it offers unprecedented investigative reach. The balance between the two will define the next phase of digital governance in India — where the line between everyday convenience and constant traceability grows ever thinner.