The Kerala State Women's Commission on Saturday took suo motu case on the alleged morphing of women's photographs for pornographic purposes by a studio employee at Vadakara in Kozhikode.
Women's Commission chairperson MC Josephine directed Superintendent of Police Kozhikode to form a special team to probe the issue, under his supervision.
"Many families in the area who had assigned the studio for shooting family functions are worried after the morphing incident came to light. At present, the Circle Inspector (CI) is investigating the incident. Since he has certain limitations in probing the case, the commission directed the SP to form a team and monitor the investigation,” the Women’s Commission PRO said.
The Commission has directed the SP to submit a report in two weeks.
“Since the issue is very grave, the Commission felt that it should be probed by a higher officer,” the PRO said.
Bibeesh who works at ‘Sadayam Shoot and Edit’ near the new bus stand in Vadakara, is accused of using pictures of women shot at weddings and morphing them for circulation online.
Bibeesh was booked on March 23 after a complaint by a woman against him. Later, several other women also complained against him.
The first woman in the complaint had stated that the accused used pictures of her taken from wedding albums and morphed them before circulating them on social media.
The complainant came to know about it after her relatives informed her about the pictures on social media.
Bibeesh has been booked under section 66 D (Punishment for cheating by impersonation by using computer resource) and 67 (Punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.
Police have seized the hard disk where the accused had stored all the pictures.
According to reports, close to 40,000 pictures of women shot during various weddings and other functions were stored in the hard disk.