Hyderabad: A physiotherapy student from Khammam, who duped and extorted money from a city-based woman by threatening to post her morphed pictures online, was arrested by the cyber crime unit of the Rachakonda commissionerate here on Thursday.
Accused Banoth Sai-nath, 20, a native of Karepally of Kham-mam district and student of physiotherapy, downloaded pictures of an unknown male from Instagram and profiled it on a matrimonial site as Dr. Avinash Reddy, MS (Ortho), working in Karimnagar. A woman from Kapra, who was working in Malaysia, saw the profile, fell for it and contacted the numbers provided.
“By using voice-changing software, Sainath spoke to the woman in three voices as Dr. Avinash and the doctor’s father and sister, Prasad and Sandy respectively. He followed this up with conversations on Whats-App. Sainath gained the woman’s confidence and collected her pictures through Whats-App. He also borrowed money from her, stating he was unable to use his bank accounts and would repay her soon,” said Rachakonda cyber crimes ACP S. Harinath.
When the woman later asked for money, Sainath delayed it for some days. When she started insisting, he threatened to post her morphed pictures onl-ine. This way, he extorted Rs. 2.8 lakh from the woman.
“Unable to bear Sainath’s threats and meet his continuing demands for money, the woman quit her job in Malaysia, returned to India and reported the issue to police. We registered a complaint and investigated into the issue before arresting Sainath,” ACP Har-inath said.
Investigations revea-led that the accused created similar fake profiles and cheated other women too. To evade arrest, he frequently changed his location while staying in hostels at Hanma-konda, Warangal, and Guntur. Sainath used his roommates' bank accounts to get money transfers from his victims. The ACP said the accused used the money extorted to buy a sports bike, costly watches and mobile phones.
