Mumbai: 57-year-old man falls prey to online sextortion, FIR registered at Andheri police station

Mumbai: 57-year-old man falls prey to online sextortion, FIR registered at Andheri police station

Priyanka NavalkarUpdated: Tuesday, July 06, 2021, 08:10 PM IST
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A case of sextortion and defamation was registered at Andheri police after a 57-year-old man was blackmailed, threatened and then his nude video was uploaded on social media platform after he failed to fall prey to the extortion bid.

According to the victim, he was befriended by an unidentified woman on Facebook, who soon approached him and exchanged numbers, only to make objectionable video calls and later engage in sextortion. The unidentified accused has been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Information Technology (IT) Act.

According to Andheri Police, the complainant had received a friend request on Facebook from an unidentified person identified as Riya Verma on June 23, which he immediately accepted. The next day, the complainant received a request on Facebook's Messenger application, wherein Riya Verma asked his mobile number for a personal chat. Without any suspicion, the man said that his mobile numbers were available on his Facebook profile, following which he received a video call on the morning of June 26.

In the statement, the complainant said, "When I got a video call, my grandson passed me the phone in the bathroom, when I was taking a bath, where a naked woman was there in front of the screen. Baffled, I disconnected the call and ignored repeated video calls made from the same number. On the same evening, however, I received a call from an unknown number, and upon answering, the man on the other end claimed that he had a nude video of me and demanded ₹50,000 in order to keep it to himself". The complainant asked the unidentified man to send him the video for confirmation, after which he would consider paying.

Similarly, the next day, on June 27, the complainant received a call demanding ₹50,000, but he asked to send the video. A few hours later, in the afternoon, the complainant received two videos, one which was captured in the video call inside the bathroom, without his face, while the other in which face was visible, was a morphed one. After negotiations, the demand came down to ₹21,999 and the accused sent the bank details for money transfer.

Since the complainant was unwilling to pay, he kept delaying and failed to make the payments. Soon, a nude video of the complainant was shared on Facebook, which his friend informed him about, read the statement. The victim immediately approached Andheri Police and lodged a complaint, on the basis of which, a First Information Report (FIR) was lodged on July 3, wherein an unidentified accused, who made nude video call, shot the video for sextortion and defamed the complainant was booked under relevant sections. While no arrests have been made in the case, investigation is underway, the police said.

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