Chennai: What seems to be the first case of arrest in India connected to posting child porn picture in WhatsApp group, an engineer working with a engineering consultancy firm in Chennai was arrested by the cyber sleuths of the state CB-CID on Thursday.

Police identified the arrested as C. Vetrivel, a native of Ariyalur district and residing in KK Nagar, Chennai. “Vetrivel, a married man, claimed he had by mistake posted the obscene picture in office WhatsApp group instead of another group which consisted only male members. The arrest was based on a complaint from a woman colleague of the arrested man,” the police said.

The CB-CID received a complaint on Wednesday from the woman employee of the engineering consultancy company located at Nandanam saying that she as member of a WhatsApp group of employees in her office on July 29 received obscene photographs of a girl child with a comment ‘how is it?’ from another member, who turned out to be Vetrivel.

“Of course it was not his child’s picture. But, he has taken picture of somebody else’s daughter. We have seized the mobile phone used to take the picture as well as used to send the image,” the police said.

Vetrivel is the fifth person to get arrested in last three months by TN CB-CID in connection with posting obscene pictures of young girls in social media and WhatsApp group. Four persons were earlier arrested for either creating Facebook pages, which were pedophilic in nature or posting vulgar comments on such pages.

“You should remember that WhatsApp groups are also public forum where you have to maintain socially acceptable decency, before posting any kind of messages or photos or videos. Otherwise you may land in trouble,” a cyber crime cell officer said.

Kundapur: Four youths have been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a minor girl, blackmailing her and also circulating an obscene video of her on WhatsApp.

It is said that Ganesh had been pretending to be in love with the victim girl who happened to be his distant relative. Ganesh then showed a photograph of the girl to his friend Nagesh, who allegedly used it to blackmail the girl and forced her to be intimate with him. Following this development, the girl broke up with Ganesh, but the girl continued to be in contact with Nagaraj as he was reportedly blackmailing her. Thereafter, Ganesh and Nagaraj are said to have told the girl to send an obscene picture of her and threatened to tell family everything if she revealed the matter to anyone. They also allegedly threatened to make the matter public on Facebook and WhatsApp. The girl, frightened and upset by their threats, sent a video of herself through WhatsApp to Ganesh.

Ganesh then forwarded the girl's video to Nagaraj and several other people on WhatsApp groups, it is alleged. The other accused, Srinivas and Harish, who saw the video, also started blackmailing the girl and pressurised her to have sex with them.

The matter came to light when the girl's brother's came to know about the whatsapp video of his sister through his friend. When he questioned his sister she explained the whole story after which the parents of the girl decide to lodge a complaint in the police station.
A case has been filed in Kota police station.

Jaipur: A khap panchayat in a Rajasthan village has banned unmarried girls from using mobile phones, saying they might get trapped in uneasy situations if they did.

The order has been circulated on, well, WhatsApp.

The directive comes at a time a similar caste panchayat in Uttar Pradesh is alleged to have threatened a film director with death and demanded a ban on his film, which ridicules such unconstitutional "courts" of village elders.

The mobile-ban order, which spared boys, came from the Choudhary Jaatiye Panchayat in Kanana, a village in Barmer district, some 390km from Jaipur.

Girls have been asked to follow the order strictly, though the panchayat members denied that violators would be punished. The order, they claimed, was only to maintain harmony within the community.

Naga Ram, the panchayat treasurer, confirmed the order. "We have asked young girls to keep away from mobiles as they may get trapped and find themselves in uneasy situations," Ram told The Telegraph. "This may happen if someone clicks obscene pictures of them. This is happening everywhere and, moreover, the girls in our community are so naïve that they may fall into a trap. It is only an advice, but a good one, which should be followed by all."

Kanana's former sarpanch Ganeshram Choudhary endorsed what Ram said. "Girls often keep chatting away on their phones rather than study. We want our girls to study well and banning mobiles is one way of doing it," he explained.

Asked why the order didn't apply to boys, he said: "Girls are always vulnerable."

The Choudhary community, which falls in the category of Other Backward Classes, numbers around 400 families in Kanana.

Village sarpanch Seema Kunwar's husband Mohan Singh Rajpurohit made it clear the khap panchayat expected its order to be followed. "If anybody dares disobey, her family will be ostracised."

But what prompted such a resolution? "There may have been incidents of girls running away," he said. "The order is being circulated on WhatsApp."

Rajpurohit added: "Elders and panchayat members of about 48 villages gathered and took the decision."

Rights activist Kavita Srivastav said: "There is a Supreme Court order restraining these kinds of diktats, calling them illegal. Police don't want to take action. We have asked for an FIR and removal of the (local) thana, which we think is working in collusion with the community."

Barmer police chief P. Deshmukh, however, said he had not received any complaints yet.

 

Mangaluru: Now days it is a trend that everything that happens around us is videographed and shared on WhatsApp. A similar kind of act has resulted in the death of a person in Vamnajur.

The deceased is Vasudev Bhat (53) a resident of Paitakal Santsh Nagarin vamanjur. He has ended his life by hanging himself at home.

It is said that Bhat used to come home drunk and pick up fight with family members and locals regularly. On Friday June 26 too he started a quarrel with the neighbours. Some locals tied Bhat to a tree and sprayed chilly powder on his face and thrashed him. They also videographed the whole act and shared it on WhatsApp.

When Bhat learnt that the video of him being thrashed was circulated in the social media he could not bear the insult and went inside the house and hanged himself.

The incident came to light when Bhat's wife, who works as a school teacher returned to the house. After she filed a complaint with the rural police station in the city, a case of suicide was registered.

Some locals have expressed suspicion about the suicide angle being given to the man's death. As police visited Santosh Nagar on Monday evening, and summoned three persons regarding the case.

 

 

Bengaluru: Windows Phone fans can now rejoice as WhatsApp is rolling out a new update that finally brings Voice over IP (VoIP) calling to the platform. Calling aside, WhatsApp decided to be generous and  added something new, with the ability to send audio files via chats.

The update tagged as version 2.12.60 will now let you place voice calls via your internet connection for free. WhatsApp will need an active Wi-Fi or data connection to deliver the same.
Voice calls aside, WhatsApp also adds the ability to send across audio files. The feature however, is limited to devices that have Windows Phone 8.1+ installed and nothing less.

There are also a number of tiny notable improvements overall and the updated app also shows an unread messages count in the header. Sharing across other apps also seems to have improved to an extent.

A 30-year-old Mumbai-based garment seller was stabbed, beaten up and punched by two men for removing two fellow shopkeepers from a Whatsapp group. Bunty Kurseja had removed Anil Mukhi and Naresh Rohra from the group because they were reportedly sharing pornographic content in the group, which had been created by Kurseja for work purposes.

The social media group was created for shopkeepers of the area to keep up with current trends in the garment industry and exchange relevant information.

According to a DNA report, many members of the Whatsapp group urged Kurseja to remove the duo from Whatsapp after they shared pornographic content despite repeated protests to refrain from doing so. Kurseja removed the two after they did not heed repeated warnings. This enraged Mukhi and Rohra, who were already upset with Kurseja who had not repaid some money he owed them.

Investigating officer for the case, Manoj Chouhan, told DNA that Kurseja told police he had borrowed some money from the duo last year. "The loan of a few lakhs was borrowed a year ago due to some family problem. The duo would keep pressing Bunty to cough up the amount, but he was unable to do so," he said.

They allegedly hired two goons to pose as customers at Kurseja's shop and get into an argument with him, following which they beat him and stabbed him on May 27. Kurseja is in hospital with grievous injuries.

Police have CCTV footage of the shop, where the entire incident was recorded. One of the accused who attacked him — 21-year-old Babu Suresh Gaikwad — has been arrested.

A case under sections 307 (Attempt to murder) and 507 (Criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered.

Hyderabad: Based on a WhatsApp complaint, police officials and the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights rescued a 15-year-old girl from being forcefully married off by her family members. The marriage was scheduled on Sunday morning at ASR Gardens in Saroornagar.

The girl had completed her SSC in March 2015 and wanted to pursue higher studies. However, her father Babugonda B. Vittal wanted her to get married and had also threatened to commit suicide if she refused. Not knowing what else to do, the girl reached out to the police through a WhatsApp message.

“At about 12 midnight, I got a message on WhatsApp. It was an image of a handwritten letter with the details of a girl,” said P. Venugopal Rao, assistant commissioner of police, LB Nagar division.

The ACP alerted the Saroornagar cops. “At 1am on Saturday, we alerted the on-duty SI. He then went to the function hall,” said Krishna Prasad, the inspector. The cops counselled the families and ensured that the marriage proposal was withdrawn.

Sulya: Case has been filed on a person Abdul Razar, worker in Taluk office in Sulya for defaming CM Siddaramaih on social site.

The person has forwarded defaming statements in Whats App regarding D K Ravi’s death case. It has been alleged that he has defamed CM, Home Minister K.J.George and Police commissioner of Bengaluru M.S.Reddy and tried to give a bad image about the government.

D.K. districts Students congress secretary Sawad Goonadka has lodged a complaint and case is registered in sulya police station.