An FIR was registered by Noida Police on 22 October on the complaint of data theft and extortion by the owner of PayTm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma and his brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma. It alleged that four people tried to extort Rs 10 crore from Paytm’s owner against the stolen data. The alleged blackmailers also threatened to make the data public and defame Vijay Shekhar Sharma if ransom was not paid.

The FIR named four persons as accused – Sonia Dhawan, an employee of Paytm and personal secretary of Vijay; Roopak Jain, Sonia’s husband; Devinder Kumar, Paytm employee; and Rohit Chomwal, a businessman from Kolkata.

The FIR doesn’t reveal the nature of the data stolen nor has Sharma commented on the nature the data. A lot of assumptions and speculation came out in the media that the data could be related to Paytm users’ personal details, which could be misused or sold by the alleged blackmailers.