Bangalore: Megha Vandana, daughter of former Sagar MLA Belur Gopalakrishna, was shocked when she found out that an unknown person was using her pictures as the profile picture on Facebook and other social networking platforms to lure boys into “dirty” conversations.
But the arrest of the culprit left Megha shaken. The Bangalore police arrested a former Chennai school classmate for impersonating Megha and flirting with youths.
In a complaint to the police, Megha said Prathima had tarnished her image by sending lewd and objectionable messages over the social networking platforms by creating fake accounts in her name. After chatting with the impersonator on Facebook, some of Megha’s friends and classmates had contacted her under the impression that they had chatted with the real Megha. Soon, she found that her old friend Prathima in Chennai had created fake profiles on Facebook, WhatsApp and We Chat.
Megha and Prathima had studied in a reputed high school in Tamil Nadu but the two had not been in touch for the last five years.
Prathima had, apparently, clicked images of Megha back then and used the same to create the fake profiles on multiple social networking sites. The police have filed a case of cheating as well as invoked sections of the Information Technology Act, 2008 against the accused. The Bangalore police arrested Prathima in Chennai on Sunday. A resident of R.T. Nagar in Bangalore, Megha told the police that a few friends brought to her notice that Prathima was even using the complainant’s picture on WhatsApp to send lewd messages to boys.
Megha tracked down the number and when she confronted the person, she came to know that it was the mischief of her former classmate. The police believe that Prathima might have faked Megha just for fun initially by using her pictures, but it was a serious offence to send messages by impersonating somebody else. “We are not sure whether the accused was aware of the seriousness of the act she was committing,” sleuths said. Meanwhile, the police have advised Bangalore colleges to issue strict instructions to the students against creating fake profiles on social media websites.
