The Hindu : New Delhi News : Engineer arrested for obscene calls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 23, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Engineer arrested for obscene calls

Staff Reporter

Phone numbers of 20,000 girls recovered

‘He began harassing innocent girls out of frustration’
‘He forced his victims to talk to him for long hours’

NEW DELHI: A 30-year-old engineer employed with a public sector undertaking in Bokaro has been arrested in Shalimar Bagh here for allegedly harassing girls by making obscene and threatening calls to them.

Vivek Kanwat, who had passed out from a reputed engineering college of Delhi, had allegedly even posted the obscene profiles of some of his victims on social networking sites after they refused to talk to him.

The police claim to have seized telephone numbers of more than 20,000 girls belonging to Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Ranchi, Kolkata and Gorakhpur from his possession. Also, six stolen mobile phones, 25 SIM cards obtained on stolen identity cards and some other stolen articles have allegedly been recovered at his instance.

It all started a few months ago after Vivek’s attempts to become friendly with girls did not succeed and he began harassing innocent girls out of frustration. “He was attracted towards girls and wanted to befriend many of them. But when he failed to earn their friendship, he got frustrated and started troubling them. He derives some pleasure out of it,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Satyendra Garg at a press conference here on Saturday.

Adopting a unique modus operandi, Vivek would steal the mobile phones of girls and his neighbours to procure the mobile numbers. He would also surf social networking sites to obtain the contact numbers and then ring up his victims at odd hours.

“He would steal the identity cards from his neighbourhood to obtain SIMs against them and also stole mobile phones to call his victims. He forced his victims to talk to him for long hours in the night. He even threatened his victims, called up their neighbours spreading rumours about them and even posted their vulgar profiles on social networking sites to make them fall in line,” said Mr. Garg.

Calls monitored

Initiating investigation into the complaints of harassment that had been pouring in over the months, a special team of the Crime Branch led by ACP Sanjay Bhatia closely monitored the calls to the victims and traced them to Bokaro in Jharkhand and AL-Block in Shalimar Bagh. The pattern was examined and it was established that the caller was a resident of Shalimar Bagh.

The team eventually zeroed in on a few suspects living in Shalimar Bagh who frequently visited Bokaro and Jharkhand and subsequently identified and nabbed the accused.

The police said Vivek, a mechanical engineer, had earlier been selected for a job in the Shipping Corporation of India, the Indian Statistical Service and had also appeared for the Civil Services examination.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi