Posing as a Bollywood singer, a 30-year-old man has been duping young women and using their private photos to extort money from them. The Coimbatore District Crime Branch arrested Mahendra Varman on Wednesday after he used social media to impersonate singer Armaan Malik to blackmail the women.
Mahendra was arrested after one of the affected women filed an official complaint with the Superintendent of Police of Coimbatore. According to police, Mahendra had created a Facebook profile and Twitter ID through which he pretended to be Armaan Malik by uploading photos and videos of the singer. Armaan is a 23-year-old Bollywood playback singer who was a finalist on Zee Tv’s Sa Re Ma Pa L’il Champs.
Through the social media accounts, he sent friend requests to various women. He would spend a few weeks conversing with them before asking them to share their private photos. He then used those photos to blackmail the women, threatening to post them online and extorting cash from the women. The women, in order to prevent the photos from being circulated publicly, would follow Mahendra’s demands.
One of the women, however, realised that he was a conman and filed a complaint with the Coimbatore SP, who formed a special team to trace and trap the accused. They had contacted him and lured him to Coimbatore on the pretext of giving him money. An unsuspecting Mahendra was apprehended by the police when he reached Coimbatore from Ulundurpet near Villupuram on Wednesday morning. On questioning him, he allegedly revealed that he had used his mobile phone and tablet to lure the women in question.
Speaking to TNM about the arrest, SP Sujith Kumar said that though the police do not have an exact figure of the money extorted by Mahendra yet, the amount could be anywhere upwards of Rs 15 lakh. The police has registered an FIR against him for extortion, compelling a woman to be naked, criminal intimidation and various other sections of the Information Technology Act.
Source: The News Minute