The unusual case of a software engineer being victimised by a woman on a social networking site has baffled the Bhandup police. A 26-year-old software engineer has complained to the police that a woman had uploaded his video, in which he is reportedly seen stripping, on Facebook and then demanded Rs10,000 as extortion from him. In their investigations, the police have found out that even though the victim had deleted his Facebook account, the accused contacted him through his friends and got the money transferred to her online bank account.

According to the statement given to the police by the victim, last month he logged on to his Facebook account. He had received a message in his inbox from a woman who claimed to be a model from Karnataka. The victim then started talking to the woman, who later asked him to visit a website called 'Omegle'. It was an interactive website, where the victim and the suspect started chatting face-to-face via the webcam, the police said.

After some days the suspect asked the victim to undress for her in front of the webcam. The victim undressed completely. However, the victim told the police that he was not aware that the suspect was recording it.

The victim then asked the accused to resume chatting on Facebook. She, however, refused to come back on Facebook, instead, she sent the victim a web-link. When the victim clicked on the web-link, he was shocked to see his own video of undressing uploaded on the internet. "After this, the suspect allegedly threatened the victim and asked him to shell out Rs10,000 if the video had to be removed from the internet," said a police officer from Bhandup police station.

"The suspect sent a message to the victim to make an online transfer of Rs10,000 to a bank account. The victim got scared and made the payment," the officer said.

According to Bhandup police, the victim after that incident blocked her Facebook profile and wanted to forget the incident. However, the accused somehow accessed details of the victim's friends and started sending out WhatsApp messages to them.

An officer with Bhandup police station said, "The accused sent WhtsApp messages to the victim's friends asking them to pass on the message to the victim to pay Rs5,000 more or the video will be posted on Youtube."

"We are yet to ascertain how the accused accessed such details of the victim's friends," the police officer said. Following the complaint filed by the victim, the Bhandup police have registered a case under Section 294 (obscene acts and songs), 384 (extortion), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC as well as Section 66E of the IT Act.

However, Bhandup police stated that since they lack the expertise to handle such cyber crime cases, further investigations have been handed over to the cyber crime cell of the Mumbai crime branch.

When contacted, senior police inspector Sunil Ghosalkar of cyber crime cell said, "We have yet not received any intimation from the Bhandup police regarding the case. Once they approach us, we will investigate the case."