Non-Karnataka vehicle owners bullied online

BENGALURU: Are you an owner of a vehicle bearing non-Karnataka registration number? Then beware! This time it’s not the RTO officials who are keeping an eye on you, but a vigilante group on the net who are allegedly breaching the privacy of many owners of such vehicles. They are hacking into their Facebook accounts to steal the pictures of their vehicles and then putting them on their public group. It doesn’t end here, after putting up the profile, the group members indulge in racial abuse and reportedly threaten those owners to report their vehicles to RTO officials and Bengaluru traffic police.

In one such incident, Priyaranjan Sharma (31), a resident of Sahakara Nagar and currently in US, was in for a rude shock when he came across the picture of his bike posted on a public forum on Facebook on July 13. What caught his attention was that the picture put on the public group was not shared by him, but by an unknown person. Though the profile identified as Naveen Patil has now been deleted, the victim had taken the snapshots of the profile and lodged a complaint with city cyber crime cell on Thursday. Sharma told Deccan Chronicle, “While I was at work, I was informed by my friend that there are a group of notorious boys on Facebook spreading communal hatred and bullying non-locals by posting their personal photos on a public forum. Out of curiosity, when I logged into the page I, was shocked to see my bike's photo also being posted.”

He further said, “What is even more shocking is that I have set a privacy setting where my photos are locked.  I had uploaded my bike photo in 2011 when I was based in Pune. The vehicle is not being used in Bengaluru at all. Moreover, I am not even in India. They are abusing a very huge group, fomenting racism and communal hatred.”

The drama didn’t end here for Sharma. Enraged over being intruded of his privacy when the victim decided to confront the accused profile person for the act and approached him on his Facebook profile, the accused Naveen Patil confessed committing the crime and said, “Yes, I had taken the picture of your bike from your album. It was not hidden and open. So I took it.”

“How shameless people can become in order to exploit and harass people. What is even more surprising is that the group has over 3.5 lakh members and some are carrying out these activities openly,” Sharma said.

He is not alone. Another victim, identified as Dinanath Kumar, a resident of Bengaluru and a native of Tamil Nadu couldn’t believe when he spotted the pictures of two of his car bearing Tamil Nadu registration number being posted on the public forum, accusing the owner of evading road tax. Kumar too has filed a formal complaint with cyber crime cell and also shot off a letter to the group admin for violating his right to privacy.

Kumar said, “Before this incident I didn’t have a Facebook profile. But, when I was told by my friend about a group of notorious youths who are intruding into the privacy of people and are hacking into their account and posting pictures I, went and checked and found the picture of two of my cars, bearing TN registration number, were posted there without my consent, which is a violation of my right to privacy. They had also wrongly accused me of not paying the taxes to which I need to clarify that I had paid the tax for both the cars in 2014.” Both the victims have also approached their lawyers in this regard.