Youth arrested for circulating morphed photos, stalking woman on social media

Kolkata: A youth from Burdwan has been arrested by the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station on Wednesday, for allegedly posting morphed pictures of a young woman as well as stalking her on social media.

The accused youth, identified as Sashi Kumar Pandey, was remanded to judicial custody after he was produced before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate's (ACJM) Court in Bidhannagar on Thursday.

According to sources, the woman had got in touch with Pandey on a social networking site. He had sent her a friend request in 2017, which the woman had accepted. Since then, they used to interact frequently.

After a few months, Pandey allegedly started behaving a manner which the woman found offensive. When she asked Pandey to stop behaving in such a way, he got agitated.

Later, the woman found out that Pandey had morphed some of her photos and circulated them on social media. He even asked her to get intimate with him.

Seeing this, the woman blocked Pandey from her profile. This made the accused youth furious. Later, he allegedly created a fake profile and sent a friend request to the woman.

After she accepted the request, not knowing that the profile was being maintained by Pandey, he started harassing and stalking her. The woman asked him to stop and threatened of legal action, but Pandey was so desperate that he did not bother about the warning.

Seeing no other way, the woman lodged a complaint to the police in 2017. A case was initiated against him on charges of 354D IPC (stalking), 469 IPC (forgery for purpose of harming reputation), 471 IPC (using as genuine a forged document or elect-

ronic record), 500 IPC (punishment for defamation), 507 IPC (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) and 509 IPC (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman).

However, due to some technical reasons, sleuths had to wait for quite a long time to locate Pandey. After a detailed investigation, the accused was arrested on Wednesday from his home at Kalna in Burdwan. The device which was used to commit the crime was also seized.