A Bandra man was hounded by scammers who used indecent edited photos of him and his family

A 39-year-old man filed a police complaint saying he was harassed by loan sharks as his photos and those of his family members were indecently altered and shared with his relatives.

According to the police, the victim is a resident of Bandra. On October 21, he got a loan on an instant loan app and also shared his photograph, PAN card and bank details. Although only Rs 2,700 was credited to his bank account, the application from which he took the loan showed an amount of Rs 5,014. Last week, he was confronted by representatives of the loan program who threatened to alter the photos and send them to the numbers of his relatives saved in his contact list if he did not pay the money.

The fraudsters then negotiated an amount up to Rs 4,500, after which he paid the said amount. On Wednesday, the applicant received a call from four unknown numbers and threatened to pay the debt. The victim ignored these threats, after which he received morphed photos of himself and his family members on WhatsApp from another unknown number. The scammers then shared the said photos with the victim’s family members and relatives.

Out of fear, the man again paid Rs 5,400 to the fraudsters through an online transaction. However, despite the fact that the money was paid, when the victim started receiving threats to pay more money, he went to the police and filed an offence. In his complaint, the victim provided the police with details of the fraudulent instant loan app, transaction details and contact numbers of loan recovery agents.

The police have registered a case under Sections 308 (extortion) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Section 67A (publication or transmission of material containing sexual acts etc. in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.