Hyderabad: Thirty-year-old Sidhanth Raj, operations manager with Vee Technology at Bengaluru, is a married man and earns enough money to lead a good life. However, he chose to earn some extra money by trapping his former woman colleague through online chatting.
Raj, is a resident of Srirampura, had worked in a firm in Balapur in Hyderabad and got close to a young woman co-worker. He concealed his marital status and chatted with her continuously even after he went to work in Bengaluru.
During an video chats of an intimate nature, Raj recorded the victim without her knowledge and blackmailed her with those clips and pictures. Fearing that he would upload them on internet, the victim from Gachibowli agreed to pay him.
He extorted at least Rs 6 lakh from the victim in various ways. Despite draining her bank account, he continued to threaten her for more money till a team of Cyberabad Cyber Crime police kicked his door open and arrested him. Vexed by his threats, the victim had approached the police in June 2014.
Telangana state is witnessing a rise in cyber extortionists like Raj. The new-age criminals sit behind their computers and blackmail their victims. While many incidents do not come out, last year the police booked 25 cases of cyber extortion and 63 cases against cyber criminals, who tried to extort money from victims, the National Crime Record Bureau revealed.
Complaints are pouring in this year too. While there are no reported cases in which major firms are targeted, individual victims are being increasingly targeted.
Cyber crooks mainly target vulnerable women or senior citizens. They either access the personal information of victim by hacking into their computers or lure the victim and then access the information. They use the information to blackmail and extort money.
Another way is by morphing victims’ photographs and threatening to publicise them.
In December last, the cyber crime police arrested BTech student Mekala Yeshwanth Reddy from his house at Hayathnagar after he tried to extort money from a girl after morphing her photographs. “We have such cases getting reported now. Most women victims ask us not to reveal their identity,” said ACP cyber crime, S. Jayaram. The detection rate is low since most of the criminals are either in other states or in foreign countries.
