India Is 11% of Global Cargo Theft, and the New Tactic Is a Fake Transporter on a Freight App

The TT Club and BSI Consulting 2025 Cargo Theft Report, published in April 2026, ranks India fourth in the world by share of recorded cargo thefts. India accounted for 11 percent of global cargo thefts in 2025, behind Brazil at 22 percent, Mexico at 15 percent and the United States at 13 percent. That places Indian road freight in the same tier as markets whose cargo crime problems have been priced into insurance terms for decades.

The same report finds that trucks account for around 70 percent of all thefts globally, which matters more in India than the headline share does. Indian domestic freight is overwhelmingly road freight, so the exposure is concentrated in exactly the mode that dominates the loss statistics rather than spread across rail, sea and warehousing.

A share of global incidents does not tell you the value at risk on your own lanes. It tells you that when an underwriter or reinsurer looks at an Indian road transit schedule in 2026, the benchmark has moved. Terms granted without argument in 2022, such as unlimited unattended vehicle cover or no route restriction, are the first items questioned at renewal.

The tactic mix has also shifted. Straightforward hijack and pilferage remain the volume drivers, but the report identifies exploitation of digital freight platforms as an emerging tactic of significance in India, where criminals impersonate a legitimate driver or logistics company in order to fraudulently accept a shipment order. That is a different kind of loss, and it does not sit cleanly in any single policy.

The mechanics matter because they determine which policy responds. The fraud is not a break-in and it is not a hijack. The goods are handed over voluntarily by the shipper or its warehouse, to a person the shipper believes is the driver of the transporter it contracted.

The pattern the report describes runs roughly as follows:

1. The criminal obtains the identity of a genuine, registered transporter, usually from documents that circulate freely: a GST registration, a PAN, a transporter ID, a cancelled cheque, copies of vehicle registration certificates and driver licences.
2. That identity is used to register on a digital freight platform or load board, or to respond directly to a shipper's load tender by email or phone.
3. The impersonator bids competitively on a load, often slightly below market, and is awarded the shipment.
4. A vehicle arrives at the pickup point. The paperwork matches the platform record. The consignment is loaded, the e-way bill is generated and the lorry receipt is signed.
5. The vehicle never reaches the consignee. Phone numbers go dead, the platform account disappears, and the genuine transporter whose identity was used turns out never to have heard of the shipment.

The first place an Indian shipper looks is its marine cargo policy or annual open cover, usually written on Institute Cargo Clauses (A) for domestic and export transit. ICC (A) is an all-risks form, and non-delivery following theft is ordinarily within it, subject to the standard exclusions.

Three wording questions decide the outcome:

• Does the policy require the loss to be a theft at all? Under an all-risks form the insured proves fortuitous loss of or damage to the subject matter, not a named peril. Non-arrival of a consignment that was demonstrably loaded is fortuitous loss on its face, which is why ICC (A) is a better starting point than a restricted named-perils inland transit clause.
• Is there a fraud or dishonesty carve-out? Some domestic transit wordings and several insurer-specific inland forms exclude loss arising from fraudulent acts of a party to whom the goods were entrusted, or from misappropriation by a carrier. That kind of exclusion is the single most dangerous clause in a fictitious-pickup claim, because it captures the loss exactly.
• When does transit attach? Cover attaches when goods leave the named place for the commencement of transit. A fictitious pickup happens at that moment, so attachment is rarely disputed. What gets disputed instead is whether the vehicle that took the goods was an authorised conveyance under the policy's carrier definition.

For most Indian corporates in 2026, an ICC (A) annual open cover without a fraudulent-taking exclusion and without a restrictive named-carrier condition is the cover most likely to respond. The claim is then a non-delivery claim, evidenced like any other cargo loss. Our note on marine cargo claim documentation sets out the packet that has to be assembled, and in a fictitious-pickup claim it needs two additions: the platform record of the transporter's registration and bid, and the genuine transporter's written denial that it accepted the load.

The instinctive second route is to recover from the transporter's carrier's legal liability (CLL) policy. In a fictitious pickup that route usually closes, for a reason that is structural rather than technical.

A CLL policy indemnifies the carrier against its legal liability for loss or damage to goods entrusted to it for carriage, ordinarily framed around the Carriage by Road Act, 2007 and the goods consignment note issued under it. If the genuine transporter never accepted the consignment, never issued a consignment note and never took custody, it has no liability to be indemnified against. There is nothing for its policy to respond to.

That leaves two narrower situations where CLL still matters:

1. Double brokering by a genuine carrier. Here the contracted carrier did accept the goods and then sub-contracted to the fraudster. It took custody in law and remains answerable to the consignor, so its CLL policy is in play, subject to its own sub-contracting conditions.
2. Freight forwarders and multimodal transport operators. An MTO that issues its own transport document has contracted as principal for the whole movement, regardless of who physically performed it.

The third candidate is a commercial crime policy. Crime wordings generally cover loss of money, securities and other property caused by employee dishonesty, and increasingly by third-party fraud including impersonation and social engineering. A fictitious pickup is impersonation fraud, so a crime policy with a third-party fraud or impersonation insuring clause can be the responding cover where the cargo policy carries a fraudulent-taking exclusion.

Two limits apply. First, many crime forms define covered property in ways that centre on money and securities, with inventory or stock either excluded or sub-limited, because insurers do not want crime policies acting as unpriced stock cover. Check the property definition before assuming trade goods are in. Second, impersonation clauses are often written around induced payment rather than induced delivery of goods. A clause that responds when the insured is tricked into transferring funds may not respond when it is tricked into transferring pallets. The same fault line runs through the payment-fraud claims we examined in deepfake payment fraud and where crime cover stops.

The insider dimension makes crime cover more relevant than it first appears. The TT Club and BSI report attributes 22 percent of global cargo theft incidents to insider involvement, with notable concentrations including India. Fictitious pickups are far easier to execute when someone inside the shipper, the warehouse or the transporter supplies the load details, the pickup window and the vehicle expected at the gate. Where an employee's participation can be shown, employee dishonesty cover or a fidelity guarantee policy is the natural response, and the cargo insurer will look hard for that participation because it may support a defence or a recovery.

Underwriters in 2026 are asking Indian shippers with material road exposure how transporters are onboarded and how a load tender is verified. The answers should be procedural documents, not assurances. The following set is what a well-run logistics function can produce on request.

Carrier onboarding

• Independent verification of the transporter's GSTIN against the GST portal, and of the PAN, rather than acceptance of scanned copies supplied by the counterparty.
• Verification of at least one bank detail through a penny-drop or equivalent test, with the account name matched to the registered entity name. Bank details supplied by email are re-verified by callback to a number obtained independently.
• Confirmation that the transporter holds a current CLL policy, with the certificate obtained from the insurer or broker rather than the transporter.
• A written no-sub-contracting clause, or a clause requiring prior written consent and disclosure of the sub-contractor before pickup.
• A record of the individuals authorised to bid or accept loads on the transporter's behalf, and the channels through which they may do so.

Load tender and pickup verification

• Callback confirmation of every load award to a phone number from the onboarding record, never to a number supplied in the bid or on the platform message thread.
• A vehicle number and driver name issued in advance, checked at the gate against photo identity and the vehicle registration certificate before loading begins.
• A pickup passphrase or one-time code communicated to the transporter through the onboarding channel and quoted by the driver at the gate.
• Segregation of duties so the person who awards a load is not the person who releases it at the gate.

Write these into the standard operating procedure and reference the SOP in the proposal form. A control the insurer knew about and priced is a control that supports the claim. A control that first appears in the claim file after a loss invites the argument that it was never in force.

A fictitious-pickup claim is decided on whether the shipper can prove that the goods left its premises, that the taking party was not who it claimed to be, and that the shipper's own controls were followed. Assemble the file with that in mind.

The evidence set beyond the standard cargo claim packet:

1. The platform record. Screenshots or exports of the transporter's registration, KYC documents uploaded, the bid, the award, the messaging thread and the account status after the loss. Request this from the platform operator in writing on day one, because accounts get deleted.
2. The genuine transporter's denial. A signed statement from the entity whose identity was used, confirming it neither bid for nor accepted the consignment. This is what converts the claim from a carrier dispute into an impersonation loss.
3. Gate and loading evidence. CCTV footage, gate register entries, weighbridge slips, the loading photograph, the vehicle number, and the driver identity document photographed at the gate.
4. The e-way bill and lorry receipt. These fix the time of dispatch and the declared value, and the e-way bill vehicle number can be checked against the registration records.
5. The FIR. Filed at the police station with jurisdiction over the loading point, naming impersonation and cheating, with the platform account details attached.
6. The control evidence. The onboarding file for that transporter, the callback log, the passphrase record.

Appoint the surveyor promptly even though there is no damaged cargo to inspect. In a non-delivery claim the surveyor's function is to establish dispatch, value and the sequence of events, and an early appointment preserves the platform and CCTV evidence that decays fastest. The transit-theft investigation practice we set out for plant and machinery transit claims applies equally here.

Three wording items and one structural item are worth raising with your broker before the next cargo renewal.

Delete or narrow the fraudulent-taking exclusion. If the domestic transit section of your policy excludes loss by fraud or misappropriation of a party entrusted with the goods, that exclusion now maps onto a tactic the market literature has flagged as significant in India. Ask for it deleted, or at minimum limited to fraud by the insured's own employees so that third-party impersonation stays covered.

Define the carrier condition carefully. Wordings that require carriage by an approved or named transporter can be read to fail when an impersonator performs the movement. Ask for the condition to be satisfied where the insured contracted with an approved carrier, regardless of who physically took custody.

Check the crime policy's property and impersonation clauses. Confirm that stock and trade goods are covered property and that the impersonation clause extends to induced delivery of goods, not only induced payment. Where cargo and crime are placed with different insurers, ask both to confirm in writing how a fictitious pickup would be handled, so the gap is identified before a loss rather than during one.

Consider whether the exposure is domestic only. Indian exporters with overseas storage and inland legs face the same tactic in the destination market, where local carrier liability regimes and local platforms apply. The cross-border version of this exposure is covered in our piece on strategic and cyber-enabled cargo theft affecting Indian exporters.

The Munich Re Specialty Cargo Theft Tactics and Trends Report 2026 is worth reading alongside the TT Club and BSI figures when preparing a submission, because underwriters work from the same market literature. A submission that names the tactic, states the controls in place against it, and asks for the wording changes above is received better than one that reports a clean loss record and says nothing about the risk.