E-Paper
Comedian reveals how an e-challan message nearly duped him: 'Who says Indians are not innovative?'
Shridhar V shared screenshots of the fake website and said that he received an SMS claiming his vehicle had been caught speeding by a traffic camera.
A Mumbai-based stand-up comedian has warned people about what he described as a highly sophisticated traffic challan scam after narrowly avoiding entering his card details on a fake website designed to mimic the Government of India’s official e-challan portal.
Taking to X, Shridhar V shared screenshots of the fake website and said that he received an SMS claiming his vehicle had been caught speeding by a traffic camera. The message, sent from a regular mobile number, urged immediate payment and included a shortened link. “Who says Indians are not innovative?” he wrote, adding, “I almost entered my card details before googling the domain.”
According to the screenshots, the link led to a webpage branded as “eChallan – Digital Traffic/Transport Enforcement Solution,” complete with the Ashoka emblem and claims that it was an initiative of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways under the Government of India. The page displayed an alert reading, “Urgent Payment Required! You have an outstanding traffic fine of INR 500. Pay immediately.”
The fake portal listed a single pending challan with a long reference number, department tag marked as “Traffic,” the amount of ₹500, and a prominent green “Pay Now” button. A warning below claimed that failure to pay could result in “hefty fines, license suspension, or court summons.”
However, a closer look revealed the scam. The browser’s address bar showed the domain as echallan.pasvahan.icu, rather than the official echallan.parivahan.gov.in. The use of a shortened link in the original SMS further masked the destination URL, making the fraud harder to detect at first glance.
In a follow-up post, the comedian said that the fake website offered options to search by challan number, vehicle number, or driving licence number. He noted that whatever information a user entered would appear alongside the challan on the next screen, creating the illusion that official records were being fetched. “Whatever you input as the vehicle/DL number comes next to the challan number in the next page to make it even more believable,” he wrote.
“Insane amount of fraud must be happening with so many people. By the time police starts acting on it, they’d make millions! Terrible,” Shridhar said.
(Also Read: ₹8,000 for puncture repair? Gurgaon man learnt about tyre scam 'the hard way')
Social media reactions
Several users replied saying they had received similar messages multiple times.
“omg thanks for this.. i've been getting these messages too!” one user wrote. “Yes. I almost did the same last week. Felt something amiss and tried verifying and realised that it’s a fake one. However got duped of ₹999 with a fake HSRP number plate website,” shared another.
“It's sophisticated because earlier scammers used to create UIs and websites, etc., which required knowledge and precision in development. But with AI, scammers have reached a very advanced level,” wrote a third user.
“I got the exact same mesaage, i was milliseconds away from clicking the link when it struck me that the message is from a phone number. Looking at this level of sophistication, yaar itna skill aur dimaag laga kar seedhe tarike se bhi paise bana sakte hai!” commented another.
