Bhopal: Photo, Video Morphing Cases Escalate, Girls Primary Target

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Pratishtha Choudhary (16, name changed), a Class 11 commerce student at a private school in the city was leading a happy-go-lucky and merry life, till a man residing in his colony walked up to her on June 16 and showed her morphed images, which displayed her in a compromising position with someone else.

The man told her that he had extracted her photos from her social media handle. He forced her to have sexual intercourse with him.

He also threatened her to circulate the photos on social media platforms if she refused. The petrified 16-year-old mustered courage and lodged a police complaint against the accused who was sent behind the bars.

Choudhary deleted all her social media accounts and till date, she shudders at the thought of re-activating her social media handles.

Senior police officials said 58 such cases were registered at local police stations this year in which photographs of minor girls were morphed to make them look obscene. Videos were similarly manipulated.

Shockingly, in 37 out of 59 cases, the accused involved in the act are either close friend or kin of the female victims. Some of them were victim’s neighbours.

Expressing concern, the police officials said securing private data including images and videos were the only panacea. They said that though the issue was grim, they were compelled to probe other cases of fraud, involving scam worth lakhs of rupees.

Only eight sub inspectors and three inspectors are posted at cyber crime cell, who have to travel outstation every week to apprehend criminals involved in monetary cyber frauds, leaving little scope for probing image, video morphing cases.

Go For Fool-Proof Security: ACP

Assistant commissioner of police (cyber crime) Sujeet Tiwari said social media users, specially women, should add only the known and trustworthy people to their social media profile.

He added that umpteen softwares were available online, which prohibit other users to take a screenshot of photos or save videos on their device through screen recording.