Textile worker held for Salem FB suicide

CHENNAI: Salem police on Wednesday arrested a 21-year-old textile worker for allegedly uploading a morphed picture of a young woman on Facebook, which drove her

CHENNAI: Salem police on Wednesday arrested a 21-year-old textile worker for allegedly uploading a morphed picture of a young woman on Facebook, which drove her to suicide two days ago.

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Suresh, who lived in the same neighbourhood as the woman, morphed the picture and posted it twice on the social networking site out of rage after the 21-year-old turned him down, Salem SP Amit Kumar Singh said. The woman’s family was looking for a match for her when the picture first appeared, source said.

“I hope this will shut the mouths of all those who were talking of police inaction. We got the coordinates of IP address on Tuesday and then quickly moved to identify and nab the suspect,” Singh said on Wednesday.

The woman’ s family had blamed police’ s in difference for the suicide.

The chemistry graduate committed suicide on Monday, a day after her morphed nude picture resurfaced on Facebook. Her parents had lodged a complaint on June 23 when the photo appeared for the first time after which the post was blocked. Police had even questioned a suspect named by the girl but found nothing against him and let him off.

But, the morphed photograph— this time with her father’s mobile phone number—cropped up again on June 26. Unable to bear the humiliation, the woman hanged herself from a ceiling fan in her home while her parents were away.

“The page was blocked earlier, but the image surfaced again on Sunday,” Singh said. Police sought the help of IT companies and Facebook for the IP address from which the pictures were posted and thus were able to track the textile worker.