Cyber Police has registered a First Information Report in connection to actress-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar's Instagram account being hacked last week. The Mumbai Cyber Cell has booked an unidentified person in the case, who had hacked Matondkar's Instagram account, which was restored on December 17. A case was registered under sections 43, 66 and 66 (C) of the Information Technology Act, while Matondkar's statement has been recorded.
On December 16, Matondkar had received a direct message (DM) on Instagram from an unknown profile, which had a link. According to the actress-politician, when she clicked on the link, she was directed to a website which asked her to follow certain steps to 'verify' the account. Subsequently, Matondkar filled in the details like her account handle and password, after which her Instagram account was inaccessible.
"When I tried to login to the account, it said that I had put in the wrong password, following which I requested for password reset. Soon I received a message stating a link has been sent to recover the account, which reassured me that my Instagram account was hacked," said Matondkar in her statement to the police. The politician then approached the Cyber Police and gave an application to lodge an FIR on the same day.
Matondkar told the police that the unidentified hacker managed to change the recovery number and recovery email of her account and had deleted all the posts from her account. While police restored her Instagram account on December 17, the FIR was lodged on Monday, wherein the accused was booked under relevant sections of the IT Act.
The actress-politician had tweeted on December 16, "My Instagram account has been hacked. First they DM you and ask to follow a few steps and verify the account and it then it gets hacked..really..!!???" She said in another post, "Cyber crimes is not something that women should take lightly. Will surely be working on it in future."
