41-year-old hacks phone, blackmails, transfers ₹30L from woman’s account; held

MUMBAI: Mumbai cyber police on Friday arrested a 41-year-old man from for allegedly hacking a woman’s phone, transferring ₹30 lakh from her bank account and blackmailing her after accessing her private photos.

The complainant, a 31-yearold animator, told the police that she put up with the blackmailing for more than a year, giving in to his demands for money. The accused also transferred over ₹30 lakh from the woman’s bank account, without her knowledge, an officer at the central region cyber police station said.

According to police, the accused Yuvraj Bhosale, arrested from Pune’s Talegaon area, spotted her with a new SUV on her social media account and asked her to give him the vehicle. When she refused, he sent three associates who snatched the SUV from her. She did not approach the police, to report the case.

She reached out to the cyber police station recently about the blackmail, however, she was initially wary of pressing charges. On Wednesday, she finally submitted a formal complaint. Deputy commissioner of police (cyber wing) Dr Rashmi Karandikar set up a team led by senior inspector Sanjay Govilkar to track the accused.

“The woman wasn’t Bhosale’s first victim. So far, we know of his three aliases; Satish, Raje Veer and Virendra Sinha. He already has eight criminal cases registered against him since 2013,” a senior officer said.

Police said he mostly selected his victims from profiles uploaded on matrimonial websites. “If he wanted to target a doctor, then he would pose as a doctor and after gaining the woman’s trust, he would blackmail and extort money,” the senior officer said.

In her complaint to the police, the woman, a divorcee, said she put up her profile on matrimonial sites in 2019. A few weeks later, the woman said, she received Whatsapp messages from an unidentified person, and a bunch of private photographs that she had put away in her phone’s password-protected folder.

“She later found someone had fraudulently transferred ₹30 lakh from her bank account after disabling the SMS alert service of her bank account,” the officer added. The man also called her and threatened to leak the photographs if she approached the police.

Police said the woman did not spell out how much money she paid to Bhosale. “These aspects will be revealed during the investigation when officers analyse her bank statements,” another police officer said. Two mobile phones have been seized from Bhosale and sent for forensic analysis. The SUV that his associates took away, has also been recovered from him, the officer said. Bhosale has been booked under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act and Indian Penal Code.