"Your electricity will be disconnected tonight" messages

Electricity companies do not send disconnection warnings from personal mobile numbers, and their staff never ask you to install an app or share an OTP.

How it works

A text or WhatsApp message arrives:

*"Dear consumer, your electricity power will be disconnected tonight at 9.30 pm from electricity office because your previous month bill was not updated. Please contact our electricity officer immediately."*

A mobile number follows. If you call, an "officer" says your payment did not reach their system. To update it he asks you to:

• install an app so that he can "check your payment". It is a screen-sharing tool; see remote access scams;
• pay a small sum of ten or twenty rupees through a link "to refresh the record", while he watches you enter your card details or UPI PIN;
• read out an OTP.

Money then leaves your account in large amounts. The same script is used for piped gas and water bills.

The signs

• The sender is a ten-digit mobile number or an unknown WhatsApp account. Genuine bill messages come from the distribution company's registered sender name.
• No consumer number, bill amount or due date is mentioned. Your real bill always carries your consumer or account number.
• A deadline tonight, often outside office hours, when you cannot visit an office.
• A person to call on a mobile number, not the company's helpline.
• Odd English.
• You know you paid the bill.

How to check for real

1. Look at your last bill or payment receipt.
2. Open your distribution company's official app or website yourself, or the bill payment section of your bank or UPI app, enter your consumer number and see whether anything is due.
3. Call the helpline printed on your bill.
4. A genuine disconnection for non-payment follows a written notice to the consumer, on the bill or separately. It is not announced by a stranger's text a few hours before.

Our sister site Bijli Bill explains how to read an electricity bill and estimate your units.

What to do with the message

• Do not call the number. Do not tap any link.
• Report it on Chakshu at the Sanchar Saathi portal, which takes reports of suspected fraud messages such as fake electricity, gas and KYC alerts. See Sanchar Saathi.
• Block the number and tell the elders at home, who are the main targets of this message.

If you called and followed instructions

Switch the phone to flight mode, call your bank's official helpline from another phone to block cards and UPI, remove any app you were told to install, and follow "If money has already gone" below.

If money has already gone

1. Dial 1930 at once. It is the national helpline for victims of financial cyber fraud. Give the transaction details; the earlier the report, the better the chance that the money can be held before it is moved on.
2. Call your bank or card company on its official number and block the card, UPI or account. Report the transaction as unauthorised and note the complaint number.
3. File the complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, cybercrime.gov.in, and keep the acknowledgement number.
4. Keep everything: screenshots, numbers, UPI IDs, account numbers, transaction references, links, the app's name. Do not delete chats.

The full checklist, with what to keep ready, is on what to do after a fraud. Helpline and portal checked on 12 November 2026.

Independent guide. This is not a government, bank or police website. Helplines and rules were checked at official sources on 12 November 2026; confirm on the official site before relying on them.