#FactCheck: False Claims Circulate Linking Former CEC Achal Kumar Jyoti to EVM Chip Manufacturing

Introduction

The scam involving "drugs in parcels' has resurfaced again with a new face. Cybercriminals impersonating and acting as FedEx, Police and various other authorities and in actuality, they are the perpetrators or bad actors behind the renewed "drugs in parcel" scam, which entails pressuring victims into sending money and divulging private information in order to escape fictitious legal repercussions. 

Modus operandi  

The modus operandi followed in this scam usually begins with a hacker calling someone on their cell phone posing as FedEx. They say that they are the recipients of a package under their name that includes illegal goods like jewellery, narcotics, or other items. The victim would feel afraid and apprehensive by now. Then there will be a video call with someone else who is posing as a police officer. The victim will be asked to keep the matter confidential while it is being investigated by this "fake officer."

After the call, they would get falsified paperwork from the CBI and RBI stating that an arrest warrant had been issued. Once the victim has fallen entirely under their sway, they would claim that the victim's Aadhaar has been used to carry out the unlawful conduct. They then request that the victim submit their bank account information and Aadhaar data for investigation. Subsequently, the hackers request that the victim transfer funds to a bank account for RBI validation. The victims thus submit money to the hackers believing it to be true for clearing their name.

Recent incidence:

In the most recent instance of a "drug-in-parcel" scam, an IT expert in Pune was defrauded of Rs 27.9 lakh by internet con artists acting as members of the Mumbai police's Cyber Crime Cell. The victim filed the First Information Report (FIR) in this matter at the police station. The victim stated that on November 11, 2023, the complainant received a call from a fraudster posing as a Mumbai police Cyber Crime Cell officer. The scammer falsely claimed to have discovered illegal narcotics in a package addressed to the complainant sent from Mumbai to Taiwan, along with an expired passport and an SBI card. To avoid arrest in a fabricated drug case, the fraudster coerced the complainant into providing bank account information under the guise of "verification." The victim, fearing legal consequences, transferred Rs 27,98,776 in ten online transactions to two separate bank accounts as instructed. Upon realizing the deception, the complainant reported the incident to the police, leading to an investigation.

In another such incident, the victim received an online bogus identity card from the scammers who had phoned him on the phone in October 2023. In an attempt to "clear the case" and issue a "no-objection certificate (NOC)," the fraudster persuaded the victim to wire money to a bank account, claiming to have seized narcotics in a shipment shipped from Mumbai to Thailand under his name. Fraudsters threatened to arrest the victim for mailing the narcotics package if money was not provided. 

Furthermore, In August 2023, fraudsters acting as police officers and executives of courier companies defrauded a 25-year-old advertising student of Rs 53 lakh. They extorted money from her under the guise of avoiding legal action, which would include arrest, and informed her that narcotics had been discovered in a package she had delivered to Taiwan. According to the police, callers acting as police officers threatened to arrest the girl and forced her to complete up to 34 transactions totalling Rs 53.63 lakh from her and her mother's bank accounts to different bank accounts.

Measures to protect oneself from such scams

Call Verification: 

• Be sure to always confirm the legitimacy of unexpected calls, particularly those purporting to be from law enforcement or delivery services. Make use of official contact information obtained from reliable sources to confirm the information presented.

Confidentiality:

• Use caution while disclosing personal information online or over the phone, particularly Aadhaar and bank account information. In general, legitimate authorities don't ask for private information in this way.

Official Documentation: 

• Request official documents via the appropriate means. Make sure that any documents—such as arrest warrants or other government documents—are authentic by getting in touch with the relevant authorities.

No Haste in Transactions: 

• Proceed with caution when responding hastily to requests for money or quick fixes. Creating a sense of urgency is a common tactic used by scammers to coerce victims into acting quickly.

Knowledge and Awareness: 

• Remain up to date on common fraud schemes and frauds. Keep up with the most recent strategies employed by online fraudsters to prevent falling for fresh scam iterations.

Report Suspicious Activity: 

• Notify the local police or other appropriate authorities of any suspicious calls or activities. Reports received in a timely manner can help investigations and shield others from falling for the same fraud.

2fA:

• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever you can to provide online accounts and transactions an additional degree of protection. This may lessen the chance of unwanted access.

Cybersecurity Software: 

• To defend against malware, phishing attempts, and other online risks, install and update reputable antivirus and anti-malware software on a regular basis.

Educate Friends and Family:

• Inform friends and family about typical scams and how to avoid falling victim to fraud. A safer online environment can be achieved through increased collective knowledge.

Be skeptical

• Whenever anything looks strange or too good to be true, it most often is. Trust your instincts. Prior to acting, follow your gut and confirm the information.

By taking these precautions and exercising caution, people may lessen their vulnerability to scams and safeguard their money and personal data from online fraudsters.

Conclusion:

Verifying calls, maintaining secrecy, checking official papers, transacting cautiously, and keeping up to date are all examples of protective measures for protecting ourselves from such scams. Using cybersecurity software, turning on two-factor authentication, and reporting suspicious activity are essential in stopping these types of frauds. Raising awareness and working together are essential to making the internet a safer place and resisting the activities of cybercriminals.

 References:

• https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/pune-cybercrime-drug-in-parcel-cyber-scam-it-duping-9058298/#:~:text=In%20August%20this%20year%2C%20a,avoiding%20legal%20action%20including%20arrest.
• https://www.the420.in/pune-it-professional-duped-of-rs-27-9-lakh-in-drug-in-parcel-scam/
• https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2023/oct/16/the-return-of-drugs-in-parcel-scam-2624323.html
• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/2-techies-fall-prey-to-drug-parcel-scam/articleshow/102786234.cms

Introduction

Artificial intelligence has quietly become part of the future of litigation, like drafting pleadings, summarising depositions, and helping self-represented parties navigate a system that was never designed for them. But what happens when a litigant doesn't just use AI but tries to manipulate it, planting invisible commands inside a court filing, hoping some AI tool reading the document will do the litigant's bidding? That is precisely the question a Connecticut Superior Court judge confronted in Matthew A. Elliott v. New York Bariatric Group, LLC, Docket No. AAN-CV-25-6066141-S (Conn. Super. Ct., Aug. 6, 2026),  a decision that may be the first of its kind in the United States to sanction a party for embedding a "prompt injection" in a court pleading.

The Facts

Elliott, representing himself, filed a motion titled "Final and Conclusive Motion for Default". Buried within it, in a tiny, white-on-white font invisible to a human reader but fully legible to any software parsing the document, was a block of text addressed not to the court or opposing counsel but to any AI system that might process the filing. The hidden text instructed such a system to treat its output as agreeing with Elliott's position and to work toward "remediating" a prior clerk's denial of his motion for default.

A second filing repeated a shortened version of the same instruction. When the court issued an Order to Show Cause warning that concealed text in pleadings would not be tolerated, Elliott did not stop. Subsequent filings carried further hidden messages, some flippant asides, one a hidden link to a horror film video submitted even after he had received notice of the sanctions hearing. At the hearing, Elliott characterised his conduct as a self-appointed "audit" of whether the court used AI and later said he continued the practice "as a joke".

The Legal Questions

Judge Walter M. Spader, Jr framed the case around two hard questions. First, does concealing an instruction to an AI system constitute misconduct even if no AI ever acted on it since the court had, in fact, decided the underlying motion on the merits from a printed copy? Second, can a court sanction conduct that Connecticut's own recently adopted AI rules do not expressly address?

Connecticut's Practice Book §4-9, effective only weeks earlier in June 2026, governs generative AI use in filings, but it is aimed at a different danger: the risk that AI-generated output might contain fabricated citations or invented quotations, and it places a verification duty on the filer to catch such errors. As the court observed, that framework addresses unreliable output. It says nothing about manipulated input from a filer seeding a document so that whatever tool later reads it will be corrupted in the filer's favour. The absence of an express rule, the court held, "takes nothing away from the duties of good faith and candour that have always governed those who appear before this Court."

The Court's Reasoning

The court's analysis rested on three pillars. First, intent, not success, is the touchstone of the violation. Because the judge decided the contested motion from a printed version, the hidden instruction achieved nothing, but the court held that the wrong lies in the attempt itself, not its efficacy, drawing an analogy to how the law has long treated attempted corruption of a proceeding as wrongful regardless of the outcome.

Second, the court situated the misconduct within the broader duty of candour owed to tribunals. A pleading, the court reasoned, is a communication to both the court and the opposing party, resting on the premise that what the reader sees is what the filer actually wrote. Hiding a second, machine-readable message beneath that surface breaches this premise. The court drew a memorable comparison: planting an AI-directed instruction in a filing is analogous to an ex parte communication which is a secret message to the decision-making apparatus that the opposing party can neither see nor answer, offending the basic adversarial principle that arguments meant to influence a decision must be made openly, on the record.

Third, the court emphasised that self-represented litigants, while entitled to procedural latitude, remain bound by the same underlying obligations of good faith as represented parties. That solicitude "stops at the misuse of the process itself".

Notably, the court situated Elliott's conduct within a growing pattern well beyond the courtroom, citing reports of job applicants hiding white-text instructions in résumés to manipulate AI screening tools and a professor who caught AI-assisted cheating by embedding a hidden trap word in an exam. Prompt injection, the court noted, has become a documented, catalogued vulnerability recognised across the cybersecurity field, and its migration into litigation was, in the court's words, "unsurprising" given how commonplace the tactic has become elsewhere.

Comparison to Mata v. Avianca

The decision draws a deliberate contrast with the now-famous Mata v. Avianca, Inc. (S.D.N.Y. 2023), where attorneys were sanctioned for submitting briefs citing wholly fictitious cases generated by ChatGPT. Both cases involve AI misuse sanctioned under a court's inherent authority, but the underlying wrongs are different in kind. Mata's concerned negligent reliance on defective AI output;  the lawyers there did not intend to deceive the court, and their candour and contrition were treated as mitigating factors even as sanctions were imposed. Elliott's conduct, by contrast, was deliberate input manipulation aimed at corrupting how any AI reader would process his own filing, and it persisted even after a direct judicial warning. As the court put it, "What may have earned a 'no harm, no foul' sanction when it was first done calls for a firmer response when it is done repeatedly after warning."

The court also cited a Brazilian labour court decision, Elisandro Martins de Barros v. Renato Ribeiro de Lima (2026), where two licensed attorneys used a similar hidden-text technique in a jurisdiction where the tribunal actually deployed AI to process filings  and where the tribunal's system caught and blocked the injection, followed by a referral to attorney-discipline authorities.

The Sanction and Its Significance

Rather than dismissing the case or imposing monetary penalties, the court chose a narrowly tailored remedy: rescinding Elliott's e-filing privileges and requiring all future filings to be made in person on paper, a sanction addressing the specific abuse (concealed digital text) without barring courthouse access altogether. Importantly, the court reaffirmed that generative AI remains welcome as a litigation aid, provided any output is independently verified, consistent with Practice Book §4-9(b).

Conclusion

Elliott is a small case with an outsized signal: courts are beginning to recognise that AI-era misconduct is not limited to fabricated citations but extends to covert attempts to manipulate the tools, including tools opposing counsel, clerks, or even the court itself might someday rely on. For practitioners, the lesson is to treat every incoming AI-processed document, from opposing productions to client materials, with the same scrutiny once reserved for verifying citations. For courts, it is a reminder that inherent authority over the integrity of proceedings can reach conduct that emerging procedural rules have not yet caught up to naming.

‍

References

• https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Elliott-v-New-York-Bariatric-Group-Memorandum-of-Decision-8-6-26.pdf 

‍

Introduction 

India has always been celebrated as the land of abundance, once known as the ‘golden bird’ that attracted the world with its prosperity and wisdom. In the current century, as the world moves deeper into the age where every nation is redefining its strength through advancements in every sector, including technology, India is preparing for a powerful transformation. “Viksit Bharat 2047” is an initiative aimed at achieving  India's aspiration of becoming a developed nation by its centennial year of independence. India’s growth story is shifting as it takes a step towards development in every field and advances progress both in terms of generating economic growth and breakthroughs in technologies across industries. 

Today, when technology touches every aspect of our lives, ‘Cyber Security’ becomes a key area that will significantly drive progress and hold strong importance under the Viksit Bharat vision, especially with the rise of emerging technologies such as AI, quantum computing, cryptography, 5G & 6G, robotics and automation, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality (AR) & virtual reality (VR) etc. 

Key Initiatives Taken by the Centre

Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre: 

The Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) was established by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to provide a framework for law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to deal with cybercrime in a coordinated and comprehensive manner. I4C is actively working on initiatives to combat emerging threats in cyberspace, and it has become a strong pillar of India’s cybersecurity and cybercrime prevention. The ‘National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal’, equipped with a 24x7 cybercrime helpline number 1930,  is one of the key components of the I4C.

Recently under I4C, key initiatives were launched to strengthen cybersecurity. The Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been incorporated to bring together banks, financial institutions, telecom companies, Internet Service Providers, and law enforcement agencies on a single platform to tackle online financial crimes efficiently. The Cyber Commandos Program will establish a specialised wing of trained Cyber Commandos in states, Union Territories, and Central Police Organisations to counter rising cyber threats. The Samanvay platform, a web-based Joint Cybercrime Investigation Facility System, has been introduced as a one-stop data repository for cybercrime to foster data sharing and collaboration. The Suspect Registry Portal, connected to the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP), has been designed to track cybercriminals and strengthen fraud risk management.

India’s AI Mission:-

The Indian Cabinet has approved a comprehensive national-level IndiaAI Mission. The mission aims to strengthen the Indian AI innovation ecosystem by democratizing computing access, improving data quality, developing indigenous AI capabilities, attracting top AI talent, enabling industry collaboration, providing startup risk capital, ensuring socially impactful AI projects, and bolstering ethical AI. Through India AI Mission, the government is facilitating the development of India’s own foundational models, including Large Language Models (LLMs) and problem-specific AI solutions tailored to Indian needs.

The mission is implemented by the 'IndiaAI' Independent Business Division (IBD) under the Digital India Corporation (DIC) and consists of several components, such as IndiaAI Compute Capacity, IndiaAI Innovation Centre (IAIC), IndiaAI Datasets Platform, IndiaAI Application Development Initiative, IndiaAI Future Skills, IndiaAI Startup Financing, and Safe & Trusted AI. The main objective is to create and nurture an ecosystem for India’s AI innovation. 

Startup India:-  

With more than 1.59 lakh startups recognised by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) as of January 15, 2025, India has firmly established itself as the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world. Startup India is a flagship initiative launched by the Government of India on 16th January 2016 to build a strong ecosystem for nurturing innovation and startups in the country, which will drive economic growth and generate large-scale employment opportunities.

Key Regulations:-

‍The Centre, in order to better regulate the cyber domain, has come up with significant regulations. To protect the personal data of citizens, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 has been enacted. The Intermediary Guidelines 2021 lay down obligations on social media platforms and intermediaries to ensure accountability and user safety. The Telecommunications Act 2023 has also been enacted. Further, the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025, passed by Parliament on 21st August 2025, aims to address related concerns. In addition, Cert-In issues guidelines & advisories from time to time, in order to strengthen cybersecurity.

CyberPeace Outlook 

CyberPeace has been at the forefront in transforming policy, technology, and ethical growth in the cyber landscape through its key initiatives. In 2023, CyberPeace hosted the Global CyberPeace Summit in collaboration with Civil 20 and G20 India, with knowledge support from the United Service Institution of India and participation from MeitY, NCIIPC, CERT-In, Zoom, Meta, InMobi, ICANN, Internet Society, MANRS, APNIC, and leading universities, which helped shape critical global conversations on trust, safety, and collaboration in cyberspace. 

Viksit Bharat 2047 is more than just a vision for economic success; it is a pledge to create a nation that is technologically secure, resilient, and globally competitive.  In this journey, cybersecurity will be at the heart of India's digital reboot, securing its innovation, empowering its citizens, and ensuring its future.

References

• https://www.cyberpeace.org/resources/blogs/i4c-foundation-day-celebration-shri-amit-shah-launches-key-initiatives-to-tackle-cybercrime
• https://www.cyberpeace.org/resources/blogs/indiaai-mission
• https://bharatarticles.com/viksit-bharat-2047-vision-challenges-and-roadmap-to-a-developed-india/
• https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2012355‍
• https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2093125

‍