Bengaluru (Karnataka): Bengaluru police have arrested a college student for allegedly blackmailing aspiring women models by morphing their pictures and threatening to upload them on social media on Wednesday.
The accused, identified as 23-year-old Prapanch Nachappa from Kodagu, is a student of a private college in Bengaluru.
Nachappa, police said, had opened a fake Instagram account in the name of a woman, Prateeksha Bora. According to his account, he claimed to be a model and would post about the opportunities for aspiring models.
The gullible girls who looked up for an opportunity would contact him on the contact details provided by him on his account.
He would also target good looking girls and would send them pleasantries to gain their trust. After a while, he would ask the girls to send their bold photographs. He would also promise to pay them Rs 2,000 per photograph and Rs 10,000 for a bikini picture.
Once he would lay his hands on the bikini-clad pictures of the girls, he would demand nudes from them. However, when the girls would refuse, he would blackmail them threatening to upload their morphed pictures on the internet.
The accused blackmailed over 20 modelling women and extorted between Rs 10,000 to Rs 2 lakh from them. Some of the models and gullible victims went into depression and even attempted suicide, police said. The case came to light when one of the victim girls approached the Halasuru police station after being threatened by the accused. The police, after collecting information, took up the investigation and arrested the accused. The police have found hundreds of photographs of aspiring models on his phone.
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