A 28-year old scientist from Powai was shocked when she was asked “how much she would charge for a night”. Her mobile phone rang non-stop for three days with callers from all across the country asking to sleep for a night as she was shocked to find her objectionable pictures in one of the social networking website.

She was unaware that an online friend had posted her profile on a social networking site, describing her as a call girl and using objectionable pictures that had been morphed.

That was in December last year. After a year-long investigation, the police last week identified the culprit, Salil Dogra, her schoolmate from Himachal Pradesh, currently pursuing an architecture degree in Chennai.

The victim lodged a complaint with the Powai police a few days after the matter came to light. “She never posted her profile on the site. In December last year, her sister got married and she mailed some pictures of the function to around 45 friends. One of them was Dogra. He morphed the pictures and posted them on the site,” a police officer said.

Senior inspector Rajdoot Rupwate of the Powai police station said, “Initially, the victim was clueless as to how the callers got her mobile number. Later, she learnt from one of the callers that she had a profile on a social networking site. When she visited the website, she was shocked to find her objectionable pictures.”

The Powai police tried to investigate the case on their own but failed to make any breakthrough. In June this year, they sought the help of the crime branch’s cyber cell. The cyber cell then traced the IP address of the computer from where the obscene pictures were posted.

The police traced it to the laptop of Dogra, who denied his role. “He claimed that his laptop was misused. But we don’t buy that theory. We found that he logged into the social networking site using his username and password. From there, he posted the victim’s profile. He stays alone in a lodge,” Rupwate said.

Assistant inspector Bharat Humbe said, “Initially, the victim was not ready to believe that Dogra did it because they were close friends and he supposedly treated her like a sister. However, when we showed the victim the links through which Dogra posted her profile on the site, she was shocked.”

Dogra was brought to Mumbai and booked under Sections 292A (printing of grossly indecent or scurrilous matter or matter intended for blackmail) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code and under Sections 43, 65, 66, 67, 72 of the IT Act.

We probably should be looking at the obscenity laws as well. There is so much of this crap on the internet, and it is a multi-billion dollar business. Do we really want government resources spent on attempting to police this, when it is simply an impossible task. We have a long way to go as a nation to get a healthy grip on our views of sexuality. Right now it seems to be one extreme or another – you’re either a prude or a pervert. There seems to be no middle ground in the law…

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