A 30-year-old man was arrested by the Delhi police for allegedly stalking and harassing more than 150 women in a span of six months through WhatsApp numbers and fake Instagram accounts, police officers said on Wednesday.
According to the police, the accused, Sachin Kumar, a resident of Shahbad Dairy, used to search for mobile numbers of women through dating applications and send them text messages, asking them to meet him in person.
If the woman rejected his request, he used to morph her face over obscene images and threaten her of circulating them on social media. He used to upload those pictures though his several fake Instagram accounts, the police said.
Additional DCP (Dwarka) Vikram Singh said they received a complaint from a woman alleging that on the morning of March 23, she received messages from an unknown WhatsApp number, to which she responded that she was married and blocked that number.
In the evening, she again received messages and WhatsApp calls from different numbers asking her to befriend him. “When she told the sender not to do so, he sent her morphed obscene photographs, abused and threatened her that if she didn’t befriend him, he would make her morphed photographs viral on Instagram,” the Addl. DCP said.
The police said when the complainant didn’t agree to his demand, he uploaded her morphed photographs on Instagram. The police lodged an FIR and investigation into the case was taken up.
During the probe, the fake Instagram accounts and virtual numbers were analysed and the police zeroed in on the accused.
During his interrogation, Kumar disclosed that he used to send messages to women through his fake WhatsApp and Instagram accounts and make indecent proposals to them.
The police said Kumar used to take photos of women from their WhatsApp display photo and morph the face with nude pictures downloaded from Google. “Till date, he [accused] has uploaded morphed obscene photographs of more than 100 women on his different Instagram accounts,” a police officer said.
