New Delhi, April 29 -- WhatsApp has agreed to examine the feasibility of blocking device IDs - not just accounts - linked to digital arrest scams, the Union government has told the Supreme Court, even as the Centre sought judicial backing for a coordinated national framework spanning banks, telecom regulators and investigative agencies to combat the rapidly expanding fraud. A bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant is scheduled to consider the status report filed by the ministry of home affairs on May 12. The report lays out enforcement measures across four fronts - platform accountability, banking safeguards, SIM traceability and a legal framework for victim compensation - marking a significant escalation since the court constituted an Inter-Departmental Committee (IDC) in December to address the scam epidemic. The IDC, constituted on December 26, decided in its first meeting that victims should not bear losses attributable to negligence by banks, telecom providers or other regulated entities. The court had taken suo motu cognisance on October 17 after a 73-year-old Ambala woman wrote that fraudsters posing as CBI officials used fake SC orders to compel her to transfer over Rs.1 crore. The device-blocking proposal addresses a well-documented enforcement gap: fraudsters routinely cycle through multiple SIM cards and accounts while operating from the same handset. Targeting the device rather than the number would make re-registration harder. The platform has also agreed to consider retaining data of deleted accounts for a minimum of 180 days, as required under the Information Technology Rules, to aid law enforcement in tracing digital footprints in cases where accounts are swiftly deleted after a fraud. Over a 12-week period beginning January, WhatsApp banned more than 9,400 accounts linked to digital arrest scams in India, acting on inputs from I4C, MeitY and the department of telecommunications, the Centre submitted in court. Its internal investigation traced a significant share of the fraudulent accounts to organised scam centres in Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, with perpetrators using display names such as "Delhi Police", "CBI" or "ATS Department" alongside official insignia. WhatsApp said it has deployed logo-matching systems to identify impersonation, logging of account display names, and large language models trained to detect evolving scam patterns. Product-level interventions include warnings for suspicious first-time messages, visibility of account age for unknown contacts, and suppression of profile photos in high-risk interactions. The Centre's submission said these measures are expected to produce a "material and observable decline" in such scams. The Centre has pressed that such measures may eventually need to be standardised across platforms. Sumeysh Srivastava, partner at the public policy firm The Quantum Hub, said these are "reasonable measures aimed at a real problem, but the route being taken is reshaping how platform obligations get set in India."...