Delhi man arrested for stalking, harassing 50 women on Instagram

The suspect, Pradeep Sharma, who is a furniture designer, would befriend young men on Instagram by posing as a young woman, said investigators. He lured them into sharing personal and private intimate photographs and videos of their girlfriends with him

A 32-year-old man was arrested for stalking and sexually harassing 50 young women on Instagram, police said on Sunday.

An iPhone containing private videos and photographs of at least 50 women Sharma had blackmailed in the past eight months was recovered from him, said officers involved in the investigation. (Representative image/HT Archive)

The suspect, Pradeep Sharma, who is a furniture designer, would befriend young men on Instagram by posing as a young woman, said investigators. He lured them into sharing personal and private intimate photographs and videos of their girlfriends with him, said police officers.

Using the images and videos obtained from their boyfriends, he blackmailed the women into sharing more personal photographs and videos with him, said police officers.

Describing Sharma as “shy and an introvert”, Sagar Singh Kalsi, deputy commissioner of police (north), said, “Sharma is married for the last eight years and has a son, but he is obsessed with young women. He stalked and harassed young women on social media.”

An iPhone containing private videos and photographs of at least 50 women Sharma had blackmailed in the past eight months was recovered from him, said officers involved in the investigation.

The police’s cybercrime team was tracking Sharma since January 20, when an 18-year-old college student approached them with a complaint that a man on Instagram was threatening to leak her personal and private photos on social media websites if she did not give him more private photos.

“The woman told us that she sent her private photos only to her ex-boyfriend, who denied sharing them with anyone else,” Kalsi said. The police then registered a case under 354A (sexual harassment), 354D (stalking), 506 (criminal intimidation), 509 (insult modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code and 66E (violation of privacy), 67 (publishing obscene material electronically), 67A (publishing sexually explicit material electronically) of the Information Technology Act.

The police started and investigation and obtained the IP address and email ID used in the registration of the fake Instagram profile through which the suspect harassed the woman. “However, no mobile phone number was provided by the suspect while registering this Instagram account,” Kalsi said.

Using the details of the internet connection with which the false Instagram account was operated, the police obtained the IMEI number of the suspect’s mobile phone, said officers. The police were then able to track down the suspect’s own Instagram account and were able to identify him.

Sharma, a resident of west Delhi’s Uttam Nagar, was arrested on Friday. Investigators said he is a furniture designer who has worked for a few big brands.

Explaining his modus operandi, Kalsi said Sharma created fake Instagram profiles of young women. “Then he followed accounts of young men and tried to befriend them. When men became his friends, he would lure them into sexually explicit chats. Once they were hooked, he would convince them to share with him the private photographs and videos of their girlfriends, as well as the latter’s Instagram usernames,” said Kalsi.

Then, Sharma reached out to those women on their Instagram accounts, revealed to them that he possessed their private intimate photographs, and blackmailed them into sharing more such videos and photographs, said the officer.

Police are investigating whether any of the 50 women whose personal photographs were found on Sharma’s phone approached authorities or if Sharma actually leaked any woman’s personal and private photographs and videos on social media.

The police have so far not taken any action against the complainant’s former boyfriend, who shared her photographs with the suspect, but did not immediately offer a reason for it.