Mumbai: The Mumbai Cyber Police arrested a 20-year-old serial Cyber stalker who created fake Instagram accounts of minor girls, hacked their social media accounts and blackmailed them, their friends to share their privy details, following which he made various demands. The accused was arrested from Gujarat on September 5 and has been remanded in police custody till September 12.
According to police, a minor girl and her friend were being blackmailed by the accused after he hacked their Instagram accounts and was blackmailing them using objectionable photos/videos, while uploading them on different social media platforms. Acting on a complaint filed at Cyber police station, the officials registered a First Information Report (FIR) and booked the unidentified accused under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Information Technology (IT) Act, beginning the probe.
During investigation, police traced the accused, Alfaz Anwarali Jamani, 20, who created fake Instagram accounts to Bhavnagar in Gujarat. It was learnt during the probe that Jamani had created 17 fake accounts on social media posing as a teenage girl. "Using these accounts, he would befriend teenagers and acquire their photos/videos and then morph their photos on an objection picture, with an intent to blackmail them. He would say that these pictures were uploaded on other social media profiles and asked them to share their social media details in a bid to stop it," said an officer.
After getting passwords, Jamani would change the credentials, hacking it and then locking the victims out of their accounts, and blackmail them into sending their photos/videos in compromising positions in exchange of not sharing their morphed photos, said police. During a search at his residence, police recovered four mobile phones, where they found out that Jamani had over 700 objectionable photos/videos of minor girls and accessed the Instagram message box where he had blackmailed them.
Police are now investigating the case further to ascertain where else he has stored the victims' photos/videos on platforms like Google Drive, Cloud and hard disk drives. Jamani was arrested and booked under relevant sections of the IPC and IT Act, and was produced in a local magistrate court, which remanded him in police custody till September 12.
