A 39-year-old man has lodged a complaint with the police stating that he was harassed by loan sharks as his and his family members’ photographs were obscenely morphed and shared with his relatives.
According to the police, the victim is a resident of Bandra. On October 21, he got a loan from an instant loan app and also shared his photograph, PAN card and bank details. While only Rs2700 were credited in his bank account, the app from which he had taken loan showed an amount of Rs5014. Last week, he confronted the loan app officials who threatened to morph photographs and send it to the numbers of his relatives saved in his contact list if he did not pay the money.
The fraudsters then negotiated the amount to Rs4500 after which he paid the said amount. On Wednesday, the complainant received calls from four unknown numbers and the callers kept threatening him to pay the loan money. The victim ignored these threats after which he received his and his family members’ morphed photographs on WhatsApp from another unknown number. The fraudsters then shared the said photographs with the family members and relatives of the victim.
Out of fear, the man again paid Rs5400 to scammers through an online transaction. However, despite having paid the money, when the victim kept receiving threats to pay more money, he approached the police and got an offence registered. The victim in his complaint has provided details of the fraudulent instant loan app, transaction details and contact numbers of the loan recovery agents to the police.
The police have registered a case under sections 308 (extortion) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 67A (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit acts, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.
