Man accused of storing huge collection of morphed pictures, arrested

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Cyber Crime police probing the case of a 25-year-old private firm employee who allegedly had stored more than 12,000 inappropriate photos of women, was arrested for morphing photos with an intent to blackmail the victims.

This comes amid growing concern over deepfakes and content that spreads obscenity or misinformation.

The action was taken against Aditya Santosh, who had joined the BPO in Bengaluru five months ago, based on a complaint filed by a woman who was in a relationship with him.

However their relationship took an ugly turn when she browsed his phone and allegedly found a large collection of compromising images of girls on his phone.

The company where the accused had been employed made it clear that the accused did not utilize any company devices to manipulate or alter the photographs.

Following an investigation the cops have now identified at least 11 morphed pictures of his colleagues stored in his mobile phone.

It is learnt that the accused had befriended several women on social media and dating apps. He had downloaded their profile pictures and later uploaded it on an application using Telegram.

The same app was used to morph the pictures, an officer said, adding that the accused had intended to blackmail the women using the morphed pictures.

The police booked the accused under Information Technology Act sections 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form), 67 (a) (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit acts) among other charges.