20-year-old Bengaluru student faces blackmail, extortion over leaked private videos: Report

A 20-year-old college student in Bengaluru, Clara, filed a complaint after private videos she shared were leaked online.

A young college student’s life in Bengaluru took a harrowing turn after private videos she had shared in confidence ended up being widely circulated without her permission.

A 20-year-old Bengaluru student's private videos were shared across social media without her consent. (Representational image/Unsplash)

The 20-year-old, a student living in the Central Business District area of the city, discovered that personal videos she had once sent to someone she trusted were suddenly appearing across social media and adult websites.

Identified as Clara (name changed), the woman filed a complaint with the Central CEN Crime Police on Tuesday, accusing a man named Anoop (name changed), originally from Kochi but now reportedly residing in Cambridge, UK, The Times of India reported. Clara had shared the sensitive content with Anoop via a messaging platform back in August 2023. At that time, she had no reason to suspect it would ever be misused.

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But to her horror, in April this year, the videos began circulating online. She immediately approached the authorities and also appealed for the content to be removed. Unfortunately, her plea went largely unheard, and by June, the videos had re-emerged across more platforms, with links being widely shared, the report stated.

Disturbed and desperate for answers, Clara reached out to Anoop, the only person she had sent the videos to, but he denied any involvement and claimed he didn’t know how the content got leaked.

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As the situation worsened, a message landed in her Instagram inbox from an account operated by someone identifying as Rony Ronel. The sender demanded ₹5,000 in exchange for removing the videos. When she refused to comply, he threatened to escalate the exposure. He even provided details of a digital payment number.

So far, the videos have been found on 23 different websites, the report said.

Authorities confirmed a formal case has been registered under Section 67A of the Information Technology Act, which addresses the publication of explicit sexual material, and under Section 308 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), involving extortion. Investigators are actively working on tracing the sources and removing the content.