Hyderabad, July 3 -- It started off as a joke. Pranksters across Delhi found they could walk up to a moving e-rickshaw, open an app on their phone, connect to its battery over Bluetooth, and switch it off cold, right in the middle of traffic. The driver, with no idea what had hit him, would be left stranded while the prankster filmed his confusion for social media.

The trend, nicknamed "tirri control," spread fast across Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and X over the past week. This week, the government stepped in and pulled the apps behind it.

How the prank worked

The app at the centre of it, BAT-BMS, is a legitimate battery-monitoring tool made by China's Shenzhen Grenergy Technology, built to track things like charge level, voltage and b...