A 26-year-old man was arrested for allegedly trying to extort money from a bank manager after threatening to post her morphed obscene pictures on social media.

The accused has been identified as Sumit Jha, a resident of Banghel in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida Sector-82. Police said that Jha, a B.Com graduate, has so far targeted over 100 women using similar modus operandi. He was previously arrested by the police in Chhattisgarh and Noida in 2018.

According to Atul Kumar Thakur, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), South district, a woman, also manager with a private bank, who lives in Malviya Nagar in Delhi, lodged a complaint against the accused.

“She stated that he was harassing her and trying to extort money from her while threatening that he would post her nude pictures on her social media account after hacking it. Police obtained technical details from the social media platform and after analysis, started a search for the accused. He was using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls through WhatsApp and other mobile applications to avoid being detected,” said the DCP.

“During investigation, police nabbed him on Tuesday on the basis of the service provider's report and specific inputs. The accused told police that he had learnt phishing techniques in 2018 and started hacking social media accounts of women for cheating and extorting money from them,” said the DCP.

“He would download profile pictures of women from their social media accounts, morph the images and after creating a fake profile on the same social media platforms, he would send his target a threatening message that he has her nude pictures. When the women sought proof, he would send their morphed pictures. Later, he used to demand money as well as pictures of their private parts,” said the DCP.

“The mobile phone used for committing the crime was recovered from his possession,” he said.