Lawyer morphs pictures of minor; blackmails her on Instagram

Chetanya Sagar Soni. Pic courtesy/Faizan Khan

A 25-year-old advocate was arrested by the Sakinaka police for allegedly threatening a minor girl on Instagram. The accused identified as Chetanya Sagar Soni, lawyer and resident of Jabalpur, created a fake account on Instagram to lure the victim to chat with him and later started blackmailing her by posting her morphed pictures on social media. A case was registered against him last year in the month of December and after a thorough investigation, the accused was arrested on Monday.

According to the police, Soni made a fake account in the name of Umar Sultan on Instagram using pictures of models to make his account look attractive. In November 2019, he sent a friend request to a 16-year-old girl based in Mumbai after which they started chatting. Later, he asked her to share photographs after he had forwarded his pictures to her. However, it became a nightmare for the teen girl after she shared her pictures as Soni used his fake account to threaten the victim with her morphed pictures and also asked her to contact him on his app-based number where he began using offensive language.

The victim informed her parents about the incident and they approached the Sakinaka police to register an FIR against the accused. After registering the case, the police began the investigation, but as the accused was using an app-based number, it was difficult to trace him.

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Abhishek Patil, Investigating officer, continuously monitored the case for three months to trace the accused and with the help of technical support, the accused was finally nabbed from Jabalpur on Monday. Investigating officer PSI Abhishek Patil said, "The accused has been arrested under various sections of IPC and relevant sections of IT Act. He was produced before the court on Wednesday and granted police custody for two days. "

An officer from Sakinaka added, "We are analysing his social media accounts as we suspect that he could have done the same with many other women via social media." Navinchandra Teddy, DCP of Zone 10 adviced that parents need to be careful and vigilant as to what their children do on social media. Befriending unknown people without any background check can land them in deep trouble. He also appealed to the people to come forward and report such incidents to the police.

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