Man sets up fake social media accounts of 353 women, held in New Delhi

New Delhi: A man was arrested for allegedly setting up fake accounts of women and sending their morphed images to their friends, police said on Friday.

A woman approached the police and alleged that somebody had created a fake social media account on a popular platform in her name and was uploading her photos on it, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crime), Special Cell Anyesh Roy said.

Obscene messages and photographs were also being sent from that ID and the fake account was being used to send friend requests as well as her morphed vulgar images to people in her friend list, the DCP said.

During investigation, it was found that the said social media account had 353 persons, all women, as friends. Further, the complainant was also approached through various other social media accounts.

Those accounts also had a large friend list, all women. When the complainant blocked these social media accounts, she again got friend requests from various other accounts and whenever she accepted them, she came to know that the same person was creating these fake accounts and sending the vulgar, obscene material, the officer said.

The user of those fake social media accounts was repeatedly sending morphed and edited images of the complainant. The site was contacted, and details of the fake accounts were collected. Subsequently, the police arrested one Vijay, a resident of Gurgaon on July 31.

Vijay worked as a helper at the IGI Airport. His interrogation revealed that while working at the airport, he started creating fake social media accounts in the name of girls, the officer said. He would randomly send friend requests to a large number of girls.

Many girls accepted his request in the belief that those accounts belonged to a girl, he added. Thereafter, once the friend request was accepted, the accused was able to see the images uploaded on the profile of the targeted girls.

Thereafter, through some other fake social media accounts created in bogus names of men, he used to send vulgar messages to the girls and when they would not entertain those messages, he, by using one Photo-Cut-Paste App, a photo-editing application, would morph their pictures.

He used to continuously harass and threaten them if they did not respond to his vulgar chats, said the officer.

His interrogation and details of the social media accounts created and managed by him suggest that he was in touch with more than 200 girls and was harassing them continuously by showing their morphed, edited offensive pictures, created through the photo-editing app, he added.