The Mumbai Police recently served a notice to a minor boy in the suburbs who had allegedly blackmailed a teenager by screen recording her private acts. Police said that the boy had befriended the teen through a social media platform and, after chatting, asked her to strip in a game, which he recorded and blackmailed her into doing the act several times.
According to police sources, a suburban Mumbai-based teen had sent a follow request to another girl during the lockdown, which the latter accepted. A few weeks later, the duo began chatting casually as friends and exchanged a number of forwards and greeting messages. Subsequently, the duo also began video calling each other.
During the lockdown, they had played a game of truth dare while on a video call, wherein the girl was asked to strip naked as a 'dare'. The girl obliged and stripped in front of the camera, while the video call was on, however, little did the girl know that the boy had switched on the screen recorder of his phone. "The entire episode of stripping down naked was captured in the video and the minor boy began blackmailing the girl into doing a few more compromising acts to keep the video to himself. The girl tried to reason with him, but to no avail, and was forced to act as he wished," said a police officer on condition of anonymity.
After a while, the girl was tired of the bullying and inappropriate demands, following which she blocked him on Instagram. A few days later, another friend of the girl received a follow request from this boy, who directly sent her a video of the girl stripping naked. Worried by the video, the friend alerted the girl and her family, who approached the police and lodged a complaint. During the probe, the police traced the boy on the basis of technical investigations and informed his parents. The boy turned out to be the girl's schoolmate, a year younger.
The police added, "Since both parties are minor, we are not sharing the names, and a notice was sent to the boy, intimating that a case has been filed against him wherein he will be asked to be present in the juvenile court when the chargesheet is filed." Police have also appealed to the parents to keep a close vigil on their children's online and social media activity, as they could be caught up in a cyber bullying case.
