Delhi man arrested for ‘sextortion’. US university professor was his target: CBI

NEW DELHI: A south Delhi man has been arrested for alleged “sextortion” from a university professor in the United States by blackmailing him using explicit video chats with a woman, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said on Friday

NEW DELHI: A south Delhi man has been arrested for alleged “sextortion” from a university professor in the United States by blackmailing him using explicit video chats with a woman, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said on Friday.

CBI said incriminating evidence has been seized in searches conducted at a premises linked to the suspect in south Delhi’s Asola (Sanchit Khanna/HT File Photo)

“The victim was allegedly lured through a Facebook profile to extract sexually explicit images during video chatting with a view to blackmail the victim. It was alleged that during video chat, the victim was lured to send sexually-explicit videos which were recorded,” the agency said in a statement.

The police uses the term “sextortion” to describe crimes that involve extorting money or sexual favours by offenders who are privy to the personal details, photos or videos of the victim.

CBI said the suspect, Rahul Kumar, started extorting money from the professor, using the email account used to sign into the platform for the sexually-explicit video chat. He succeeded in extorting $48,000 ( ₹39 lakh) from the professor but didn’t stop. Among the things that he wanted the professor to buy him were an iPhone charger and earphones

This is when the professor approached CBI for help.

CBI said it has incriminating evidence, such as conversations between the victim and the accused in which he threatened to put the chats in the public domain.

According to official data, the Delhi Police received 409 complaints of “sextortion” in 2021, and 1,469 till August 31 this year but most of these complaints were not converted into proper first information reports (FIRs) due to reluctance of the victims to press charges. In 2021, only 24 sextortion FIRs were registered while 44 FIRs were registered by the city police till August end.