Hyderabad: The capital of Telangana has suddenly reported a rising number of victims who fell prey to vulgar video calls and were later blackmailed for it.
Recently, the Telangana police reported a rise in cybercrime cases as many urged the police against strangers making video calls which eventually turned vulgar and lewd, victims sometimes were even coerced to strip naked unknown to them that the video call was being recorded or that screenshots were being taken.
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Later on, they were blackmailed by the strangers holding the recordings as the compulsive evidence for ransom. One of the victims had even reported that he transferred a sum of Rs. 1 lakh to the blackmailer’s account.
Telangana Police, seeing the sudden rise in such cyber-crime cases had urged the public to refrain from accepting video calls from strangers. It was also seen that majority of victims were males who were reached by female strangers who later turned out to be extortionists and blackmailers.
All three police Commissionerate of Telangana eventually reported that the gang responsible for these rising cases of cyber blackmailing were stationed in Rajasthan. A woman generally calls random males and talks in a deceiving way to eventually persuades them to lower their guards and offer some leverage to be blackmailed for, like strip naked on video calls.
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Then the cyber fraudsters would make a threat call asking for ransom failing to fulfill which they would circulate the alleged video or photo on social media and to their acquaintances.
Ever since the covid-19 pandemic lockdown, people are spending increased time online and fraudsters are taking advantage of this finding innovative ways to dupe their victims.
In August last year, similar cases of cyber-crime were reported in Bhopal and Indore and the Madhya Pradesh police had appealed to people to apply strict privacy options to secure their photographs and personal details. They stressed to refrain from sharing photos or videos with strangers.
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A similar case was also reported in Ghaziabad when a 22-year old male from Rohtak made random nude video calls to a stranger woman, strip in front of them, take a screenshot before they disconnected calls, and then use the images to blackmail.
