Bhopal(Madhya Pradesh): Sextortion crooks are posing a major challenge to the cops in the district cyber crime cell. As many as 60 complaints pertaining to sexual extortion or 'sextortion' have made their way to the police records in the first three months of this year itself. This implies that on an average at least 20 such offences are taking place in city every month.
To add to the shocker is the fact that no leads have been received in any of these complaints, leaving the cyber crime wing officials and personnel in a limbo, sources in the cyber crime cell said. Apart from the names of the states where the sextortion gangs are operative, the cops here are oblivious of any other leads that could help them in collaring the accused, sources added.
Senior cyber crime officials said that the highest numbers of sextortion gangs, around seven, are operating from Jharkhand and West Bengal. Earlier, Bharatpur and other districts in Rajasthan were the epicentre of sextortion crimes, from where the crooks have relocated to the other states, as the Crime branch team had arrested several of them in December 2022.
Officials continued by saying that tracing the accused behind sextortion crimes is challenging as the crooks are now using messaging applications using fake SIM cards.
Earlier, the crooks used social media platforms, where tracing them through IP addresses was an easy task. Currently, as the sextortion crimes are taking place on messaging applications such as WhatsApp, telegram and Hike messenger, the IMEI number of the mobile phones is being traced to pick the trail leading to the accused, which is an arduous and herculean task, officials said.
On the other hand, officials maintained that with increasing awareness regarding sextortion and other cyber crimes, a number of complainants turn up at Cyber crime cell before giving in to the crooks, which safeguards them.
Do not answer unknown calls on messaging apps: ACP
Assistant Commissioner of police (Cyber crime), Sujeet Tiwari said that people are constantly being made aware of not receiving video and audio calls made by unknown persons on messaging applications. Raised awareness among citizens has resulted in an increase in reporting of such incidents at Cyber crime cell, he added.
