Clubhouse: One of three arrested accused a serial stalker of women, say police

Two chatrooms were created on Clubhouse where participants were making derogatory statements about women and talking about auctioning their body parts.

Mumbai One of the three accused arrested by the Mumbai cyber police in the Clubhouse app case is a serial stalker of women on social media.

The cyber police are checking if there was anyone else instigating the young minds or if there was anyone supporting them financially or by any other means (REUTERS)

Many victims are now coming forward after the arrest of Jaishnav Kakkar, 21, a senior officer said. “Since we have already added online stalking charges, we would use these women witnesses to make a watertight case against the accused.”

Kakkar, Akash Suyal, 19, and Yash Parashar, 22, were arrested in Haryana on Friday for making objectionable comments against women, especially Muslim women, on Clubhouse, an audio chat application.

They were brought to Mumbai and produced before a holiday court at Bandra on Saturday.

Appearing for Suyal, advocate Shyam Rishi, opposed the police remand plea and said invoking sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act in the case was wrong. “They (the accused) were merely members of a chatroom, which is like a WhatsApp group.”

He said the investigators had already seized their mobile phones and hence, there was no need for their police custody. “Our judicial system should treat them as victims and send them to correction homes.”

The court, however, remanded the three in police custody till January 24.

The cyber police are checking if there was anyone else instigating the young minds or if there was anyone supporting them financially or by any other means.

DCP Rashmi Karandikar said, “As there were nearly 300 members in the chatrooms, we are trying to find out who else expressed their thoughts in vulgar and objectionable manners to defame women.”

Rahul Kapoor, who was arrested by the Delhi police Special Cell on Saturday, was also under the Mumbai police’s scanner. He used fake name Bismillah-Ul Bilal Khan on Clubhouse.

“Since he did not use vulgar language, he was not the immediate focus. We rather went after the moderator of both the chatrooms and those who were behind promoting their content on Instagram and other platforms,” a Mumbai police officer said.

Two chatrooms were created on Clubhouse where participants were making derogatory statements about women and talking about auctioning their body parts.

Suyal, who has passed class 12, was allegedly the moderator and main speaker of the two chatrooms. Kakkar is a BCom student, while Parashar is a student of law.

Kakkar was using ‘@jaishnav’, while Parashar was using ‘Sherisingh ka papa’, ‘biker gang 5’ and pardhan@haryana_aala’ for promoting the chatroom talks.

A crime branch official said two videos of the Clubhouse chatrooms were published by a Twitter user, ‘Jaimine’, and an Instagram account, ‘lotus watch’, on January 16 and 19, respectively. The moderator was using an ID, Kira XD, which was also used by Suyal.

An FIR was filed by a woman with the cyber police on January 19. The complainant got to know about Clubhouse after she was alerted by a friend of her.

“The complainant said her and her friend’s images were used in other Clubhouse chatrooms on October 27 and November 27, last year. Members used filthy, vulgar, and derogatory language and also auctioned private parts of the women,” a cyber police officer said.