GUWAHATI: As top-end cyber criminals are busy using the Internet to commit high-profile cyber crimes, small-time criminals based out of Guwahati are using the social media to make a quick a buck by getting into people’s pages and profiles and downloading their personal information and their photographs.
For those uploading photos on Facebook, especially women, now need to be careful with their personal settings as petty criminals download the photos and use it for nefarious purposes.
Recently, the media reported about a Guwahati student who had registered a complaint at the Dispur Police Station saying that her image was used on OLX for illegal activities.
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However, in a new incident, another Guwahati girl was surprised and terrorized to find her image from Facebook circulating on WhatsApp as a message along with ‘a rate’ to meet and talk to her. Her friends brought this to her notice and she immediately took help of the police. The victim has registered a case with the Chandmari Police Station and provided a screenshot of the message.
The Chandmari Police Station officials started tracing back the messages and found the number from which it was being circulated. Based on the call records the police then picked up a couple, Abul Azad Ansari a.k.a ‘Bhokua’ and his wife Monjuara Begum from Amiya Nagar and recovered the cell phone used for sending the messages. The phone belonged to Azad’s wife and he was using it for circulating the messages.
The culprit, Abul Azad had been downloading and using images of women and girls from social media sites and then created messages on WhatsApp that he further circulated for luring males to talk and meet with beautiful ladies. Even rates were placed for the images that ranged from Rs. 1500 to Rs. 3000.
Once the police switched on the cell phone they were in for a surprise as found all the photos of the victim and several other images and messages from the phone.
According to the Officer-in-charge, Chandmari Police Station, Biren Chandra Deka, “We recovered all the photos of the victim and many more images and messages from the phone. The surprising part was, when we switched on the phone. Immediately, calls started pouring in from the potential customers wanting to meet. So, we requested the victim to receive the customers’ call. We asked them to come near the Titan showroom near Chandmari and managed to catch three such customers.”
