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She said that police tracked Bora down with the help of the information that he had provided on Instagram to create the profile, which gathered more than a million followers in a short period.
Last week, an Assamese woman’s “provocative posts” on Instagram became the subject of headlines, including claims that she had entered the adult film industry. Now, it has emerged that she was the victim of a cybercrime from a man she studied with, and who allegedly morphed her images and videos using AI tools to harass her.
The accused, 30-year-old Pratim Bora, is a mechanical engineer who had a work-from-home job and was arrested by Dibrugarh police from Tinsukia on Saturday night. He has been booked under sections of the BNS, including criminal force to outrage a woman’s modesty, sexual harassment, production and circulation of obscene material, criminal intimidation, creating false material to harm someone’s reputation and defamation.
Dibrugarh SSP in-charge, Sizal Agarwal, said on Sunday that the woman, who is around the same age as the accused and is married, had filed a complaint with the Dibrugarh police on Saturday, alleging that her images had been morphed and circulated on social media.
She said that police tracked Bora down with the help of the information that he had provided on Instagram to create the profile, which gathered more than a million followers in a short period.
“When she gave us the complaint, she gave us a reference to an Instagram page. We sought its details and found a contact number. From there, we traced the identity of the accused, whom we have arrested. We cross-checked with the woman if she knew Pratim Bora. She confirmed that they had studied together and had a past acquaintance. It confirmed our suspicion that he was behind it,” said ASP Agarwal.
Agarwal told The Indian Express that the accused and the woman had been in college from 2013 to 2017.
Police said that Bora appeared to be using AI software such as OpenArt and Midjourney.
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“We have seized a laptop, two mobile phones, a hard disk, a tablet, a pen drive, a card reader and some SIM cards. When there is a digital crime, information is sought from multiple agencies. Since the case was only registered yesterday, it is at a preliminary stage. He has used AI software, so we will seek all the information. What credentials he used to create all this, how many fake profiles and IDs he created,” said Agarwal.
She said that while the Bora appeared to have begun creating and circulating the content for “harassment based on personal reasons,” he had also made money by monetising the content.
“From our interrogation, we found that he was trying to harass the woman based on personal reasons. After a while, when he created a webpage on Linktree and gave a link to view pornographic content, there was a subscription system. He got money from the subscription. So as the crime continued, he began earning and got almost Rs 10 lakh from the whole process. He became greedy after that and continued the crime because of that,” she said.
The profile has amassed millions of views and followers in the past week after a morphed photo of the victim with adult film personality Kendra Lust was uploaded on July 2 with a caption suggesting that she was joining the adult film industry. The provocative posts on the account date back to 2022.
English (US) ·