Mumbai: College student arrested for blackmailing Mumbai minor

The Antop Hill police arrested and booked a college student from Jamnagar in Gujarat for allegedly blackmailing and sexually harassing a Mumbai-based minor girl through social media; however, he was later released after being served a notice, police said.

The accused allegedly blackmailed the minor with her morphed photographs and pressured her into severing ties with one of her male friends.

The victim, a 15-year-old girl, had an account on Snapchat through which the duo connected. According to the police, the girl`s father received a call from an unknown number, during which the accused, a 19-year-old man, claimed to have obscene photographs of his daughter. He allegedly threatened to upload the images across social media platforms, demanding that the girl stop communicating with a boy from her class.

The father immediately confronted his daughter, who, upon being questioned, told him that she had recently befriended a boy on the social media app and had been actively interacting with him. Since most communication on the platform happens through photos, she had shared some selfies with him. However, she eventually cut off contact as the boy allegedly began picking fights with her over her friendships with other male classmates — particularly one named Ayush.
A few days later, the accused, a first-year college student, sent a series of morphed photographs to her. “The face in the images was that of the victim, but it had been digitally attached to an obscene body. The accused had edited these images using random mobile applications,” a police officer said.

He used these morphed images as a tool to threaten and blackmail her, pressuring her to cut ties with Ayush and her other male friends.

After learning the details from his daughter, the victim’s father approached the Antop Hill police and narrated the entire incident. An FIR was promptly registered, and a formal investigation was launched. The police traced the accused`s Snapchat account to Jamnagar and dispatched a team to apprehend him.
During interrogation, he admitted that he was angry, jealous, and upset over the victim’s closeness with several of her male classmates and had acted out of a desire for revenge.

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