Mumbai: Bandra police nab 23-year-old hacker from Jodhpur

Diptesh Salecha

The Bandra Police on Thursday arrested a 23-year-old from Jodhpur in Rajasthan for allegedly hacking into dozens of Whatsapp and Facebook profiles. The arrested accused, Diptesh Salecha, had earlier been arrested by the Pune and Nashik police on similar charges. The accused has three such cases registered against him in Mumbai -- at the Bandra, Versova and Borivali police stations.

"He is a Std X dropout, but has excellent knowledge of information technology, which he uses to commit such cyber offences," said senior police inspector Girish Vishnu Anavkar of Bandra police station. The investigating officer who arrested Sulecha from Rajasthan, PSI Sachin Chaudhry, said, "It was very difficult to crack this case because we didn't have any IP address. We, therefore used his trick and chatted with him on Instagram to get the IP address."

The accused hacked into accounts by managing to get hold of one-time passwords (OTP) that are used for account verifications on the web. He then sent obscene messages from the hacked accounts to people on the victim's contact list. He also obtained contacts of his victims and extorted money from them. DCP Zone IX Paramjit Singh Dahiya said, "We have booked him under section 500 (punishment for defamation), and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the IT Act. Further investigation is on."

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