FIR registered against ‘unknown’ person in fake FB profiles case

Hours after Free Press Journal published a story on Tuesday, with the headline ‘Police officer’s son creates fake FB accounts of a girl’, Bhandup police have finally registered the First Information Report (FIR) against ‘unknown’ person for which a 22year-old girl had been running from pillar to post since April 1.

The ‘unknown person’ has been booked for stalking (354D of Indian Penal Code) and sending offensive messages through communication service (66A of Information Technology Act), cheating by personation by using computer resource (66 D of IT Act).

The accused is said to be the son of a senior police officer, as reported previously, who works at the Commissioner of Police office. Shockingly, the name of the accused is not stated in the complaint. The Zonal Deputy Commissioner of Police, Sachin Patil, confirmed the development in the case.

Meanwhile, the victim said she has been trying to lodge a complaint for over two weeks and had received no response till now.

“The police officers were not cooperating with me until you (FPJ) intervened. I am thankful to you. Earlier they told me that it is not a penal offence. But today they have registered the FIR and added multiple sections of Information Technology (IT) Act and IPC,” said the victim.

However, she was a little upset as the police have not named the accused in the FIR.

“The police have told me that they cannot name the person until the Facebook responds to the Mumbai police. All I can do is to wait for the official reply,” said the victim.

Justifying the reason why the name of the accused has not been added in the FIR, senior inspector of Bhandup police station Sripat Kale said, “The girl is also not confident about who is the main culprit. She is suspecting a person. We are waiting for the response from Facebook for further necessary action.”

The Cyber Cell of Mumbai Crime Branch at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) have requested the executives of Facebook twice – on April 5 and April 11 — to know the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the user who created the multiple fake Facebook accounts of the victim.

The senior officer Mumbai Crime Branch told the Free Press Journal that the cyber cell will extend full cooperation to Bhandup police to investigate the matter.