The Cyberabad Cyber Crime cell have arrested one of two men accused of harassing a woman with explicit videos of her. S Dilip Kumar was arrested from Visakhapatnam on Saturday, while the other accused in the case is absconding.
The victim, a 20-year-old college student from Hyderabad, had approached the cyber crime cell on Friday to file a complaint against her relative Dilip Kumar, on charges of harassment. During investigations, the police was told by the victim that Dilip had received the videos from another man who she had been in a relationship with.
“When the victim was studying in the Intermediate, she was in a relationship with the second accused who is absconding. However, her parents did not approve of their relationship. Soon after that she had stopped talking to the accused,” Cyberabad Assistant Commissioner (Cyber Crime) Jayaram told TNM.
However, the man started blackmailing the woman recently, using her old pictures. He demanded that she send him explicit videos of herself, saying that he would leave her alone after that.
“She agreed thinking that this would end the harassment, and sent him the videos. But he uploaded the video on a pornography portal. The accused also sent all the videos to her relative Dilip, who shared the videos with his friends and family. He also forwarded the pornographic link to her to mentally harass her,” said the ACP.
The cyber crime police arrested Dilip after a preliminary investigation.
A case has been registered under Sections 509 (Act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 355 (Assault or criminal force with intent to dishonour person) of the IPC and section 67 of the IT Act against Dilip, while investigations are still on into the second accused, who is currently absconding.
This case is just one of the more than 67 cases of cyber crimes already registered in 2017, of which 20 cases involve blackmail.
“Most of the cases are of stalking and blackmailing. There were 230 cases registered in 2016 under cyber crime,” said Jayaram.
“90% of the stalking or social media harassment cases are done by persons known to the victim. Even in this case, one of the accused is a relative and another person is a close friend,” he added.
The ACP added that the problem of cyber crimes has burgeoned with growing access to the internet. “Now that the internet is accessible to everybody, it has become easy for a person to commit cyber crimes from anywhere in the country,” ACP Jayaram said.