As per the plea, after a cyber-attack in February 2022, users of BitBNS were left unable to withdraw funds from their wallets, causing them significant financial distress and hardships.
“Numerous users have faced month-long delays in accessing their legitimate funds, and some have been unable to withdraw their investments. Additionally, discrepancies in portfolio values and wallet balances that did not align with market trends have caused further financial losses and emotional distress. Despite repeated user complaints and appeals to address these issues, BitBNS has failed to provide resolutions, leaving crores of user funds inaccessible,” the plea stated.
Attempts at availing other legal remedies, including a joint complaint to the National Cyber Crime Portal, have yielded no results due to jurisdictional and infrastructural challenges, the petitioners said.
They, therefore, sought the Delhi High Court’s intervention in the matter. The prayers made in their petition include:
– The SEBI, the RBI and/ or the Union Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) should be directed to put in place a comprehensive regulatory mechanism to check on cryptocurrency/ VDA and protect investors.
– An SIT or the CBI should be directed to register a case against BitBNS to thoroughly investigate the allegations of the financial fraud, cyberattack, fund mismanagement, and operational lapses at BitBNS.
– The funds of BitBNS investors must be released and the ‘arbitrary’ restrictions on withdrawals must be lifted.
– Compensation should be paid to BitBNS users who have suffered losses due to mismanagement and fraudulent activities by BitBNS.