PANAJI: Cyber crime police on Friday filed a charge-sheet before the children’s court against Chandrahas Rane for allegedly hoodwinking girls on a social networking site in sharing their nude photographs.
Rane has been charged under Sections 66C and 67 of the Information Technology Act as well as Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 8 (12) of Goa Children’s Act.
Police have relied on evidence obtained using technology as well as statements of witnesses. Thirty-six-year-old Rane from Kalmamal, Borim-Ponda was arrested by cyber crime police in November and is currently in judicial custody.
According to the police, Rane, through a social networking site, allegedly lured girls under the pretext of modeling career and made them send their nude pictures. He also allegedly created fake profiles of women on Facebook and befriended girls especially teenagers, the police said. The police said that he even allegedly blackmailed victim girls and asked them to send more nude pictures.
Police had found hundreds of photographs of victims which included semi-nude and nude pictures of total 28 victim girls. Rane had claimed that he did it to avenge his break-up; however, the police said they were trying to find out whether the accused misused these photographs. According to police, the victims appear to be minor in age.
The alleged accused would ask victims to share their Facebook account password under pretext of authentication and then take over the Facebook account. This, he did in order to destroy the evidence, a source claimed, adding that, the police are in possession of the data which was retrieved during the course of investigation. The details of chat history, the photographs have been recovered by the police, a source informed.
A complaint was lodged by a woman from North Goa claiming that her minor daughter’s fake Facebook account was created and that she was blackmailed by a woman on Facebook.
