Cyber Unit of Mumbai police has arrested 20-year-old Alfaz Jamani from Gujarat for stalking, blackmailing, hacking and child pornography using images of minor girls between 9 to 15 years of age. As per the reports, police have found over 700 nude photos of minor girls on his mobile phone. He managed to get these photographs from girls after hacking in their Instagram accounts.
Dr Rashmi Karandikar, DCP (Cyber), said that they received a complaint from some girls’ parents on 6th September that someone has uploaded nude pictures of their children on Instagram. “All the girls are aged 9 to 15,” she added. The cyber police initiated the investigation and traced the accused’s location in Mahua village of Bhavnagar district, Gujarat.
Afzal morphed minor girls’ photographs and shared them on fake accounts
Police said that they sent a team to arrest Alfaz Zamani. During initial interrogation, he admitted to the crime. He said that he used to send friend requests to minor girls. Once they accept the request, he would start talking to them regularly. He used to download their photos from the Instagram account and morph them to upload on his other Instagram account. He then takes a screenshot of the morphed image and sends it to the victim, claiming that someone has uploaded her nude photo. He then asks them to share their username and password to remove the image which most of the panicked girls shared.
“Once the girl shared the login credentials, he would change the password, the password recovery email id, and mobile number, to ensure that the girl cannot recover the password. He would then again blackmail them to send their nude photographs and videos,” said a police officer at cyber cell Mumbai.
The accused pretended to be the victim and made other girls send nude photos and videos
Zamani also informed that he would talk to the victim’s friends pretending to be her. He would ask them to share their nude photos and videos, claiming that he would share diet and medicine details to keep their bodies in shape. DCP Karandikar said, “We found out 17 fake Instagram profiles made by the accused, which he used to become friend with minors.” Police officials are also asserting where else he could have saved photos including storage devices, cloud storage and others.
Jamani left his studies after 12th and took a job in an onion dehydration plant. This is not the first time his name had appeared in such a case. He was arrested in 2019 for cyberstalking, but at that time, he was granted bail.
The cyber police have registered a case against him under IPC section 354 D (stalking), POSCO Act Section 12 (punishable for sexual harassment),13 (Use of child for pornographic purposes), and Cyber law Sections 43, 66, and 66 (a). A metropolitan magistrate has remanded him for six days in police custody.
