Woman blackmails childhood friend using morphed pics

A woman, aged 24, allegedly blackmailed her childhood friend with her morphed images and demanded a ransom, reportedly "to settle scores" after the latter subjected her to public humiliation.

The woman's plan, however, failed and she landed in police custody on Saturday. The incident took place in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad.

According to reports, about four months back, a woman, in her 20s, had filed a police compliaint, stating that a social media user was blackmailing her with her inappropriate morphed pictures. Acting on the compliaint, Uttar Pradesh Police’s Cybercrime unit began a probe to arrest the accused.

The crime came to light on Saturday when the cybercrime official arrested the accused after tracing her location with the help of the IP address. The accused turned out to be the complainant’s childhood friend.

The accused had allegedly made a phoney account on a popular social media platform, and used it to send the complainant her morphed images. The accused also demanded Rs 10 lakh from the complainant by threatening to post the morphed images online.

According to a report by The Times of India, a police officer said, “The complaint was registered at the police station on May 7 and investigation in the case was on. The cybercrime team successfully traced the Instagram user through the IP address that showed the user’s location in Warsi Nagar. She was arrested and later identified as a childhood friend of the complaint and also her neighbour. During interrogation, she told the police she wanted to settle scores with her after she had once insulted or in public”.

A case has been lodged against the accused woman under applicable sections 420 (cheating), 384 (extortion), 504 (intentional insult) and 507 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Relevant charges under the Information Technology Act (IT Act) have also been pressed against the accused.

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