Ganderbal/Aug, 2: The court of Judicial Magistrate Kangan has rejected a bail plea of a man accused of blackmailing a female tourist, morphing her photographs and threatening to post them on the internet.
After hearing both sides, the Court of Judicial Magistrate, Kangan, Kartar Singh observed that prima facie allegations leveled against the accused were well founded and the custodial interrogation of the accused was needed.
The court said that the victim had hired the accused as a photographer and was in a fiduciary relationship. It said that the accused was alleged to have sent on WhatsApp an objectionable picture of the wife of the complainant after doctoring it by digitally manipulating and morphing with cropping the face of the victim on the objectionable picture.
Thereafter, the accused is stated to have sent the morphed picture to the complainant, blackmailed him and threatened that he would put the picture on objectionable websites and social media.
The court said it was aimed to cause injury to the complaint and his wife and the accused demanded money for not doing it. It said that it had come on record that Police had seized some mobile phones from the accused but soon before his arrest, he had deleted the data from his mobile.
However, Police are not sure whether the accused has transferred the data to other storage or not as the data is yet to be collected and tracked by the FSL expert.
It said that in the given narration of facts, the accused was involved in grave and serious offence. The threat of someone’s objectionable picture becoming viral leaves one with the feeling of being scared, unsafe and worried about what will happen next.
The court said that the person who was hired as the photographer by the tourists had certainly broken the trust of the complainant and his family and it would give the wrong impression to other tourists interested to come to Kashmir.
It observed that the accused also shared the objectionable picture to his one local friend who appeared before the magistrate to record his presence and supported the prosecution version. Hence the bail application of the accused is rejected.
