Six youths arrested for morphing photos, extorting students in Dharwad

DHARWAD: The Dharwad Suburban police station have arrested six youths who would morph photographs of others, add vulgar audio and post it on social media troll pages. They would then demand money to take down the pictures. While four of the arrested are from different districts preparing for competitive exams here, two others are studying BA final year in a prestigious college in the city.

The arrested youths were managing 2-3 troll pages and would extort money from their victims. In a recent case, they had taken a picture of a group of college students at an event, edited it and added vulgar audio and posted it on Instagram. When the students asked for the picture to be taken down, the youths demanded Rs 10,000-20,000. Fed up of this, one of the students in the photograph lodged a complaint with the police.

Hubballi-Dharwad Police Commissioner N Shashikumar briefing the media about the arrest.

“A case was registered on Monday at the Dharwad Suburban police station. The complainant said some miscreants had downloaded a picture of his collegemates, edited and morphed it, added vulgar conversation to it and had uploaded it on troll pages. The miscreants would give a phone number and would demand anywhere in the range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 to take the photos down”, said Hubballi-Dharwad Police Commissioner N Shashikumar.

The police plan to seek police custody of the arrested youth as they suspect that the youths may have targeted others too. “If there are fresh complaints, we will register them too”, the police commissioner said.