kolkata

Updated: Mar 19, 2018 17:23 IST

A woman in her mid-thirties committed suicide in West Bengal’s East Midnapore district last week after four individuals, including three high school students, allegedly uploaded nude photographs of her on the social media, police said on Monday.

Police said the woman, a housewife from Chandipur in East Midnapore district, hanged herself at her residence late on March 17.

The four have been arrested on the basis of a suicide note left behind by the woman. “Cases have been registered under sections that deal with dishonouring any individual by posting obscene pictures on the social media... Their act provoked the woman to kill herself,” said superintendent of police (East Midnapore) V Solomon Nesakumar.

The accused were identified as 21-year-old Chandan Guchait, a 17-year-old student and two younger boys aged 16. They were remanded in judicial custody for two weeks by a district court on Sunday.

The victim had lost her mobile phone while taking her daughter to a dance school a couple of months ago. One of the accused, a Class 10 student at a district school, found the phone and returned it – but not before allegedly transferring a few “private” photographs of the woman to his mobile device.

The woman’s brother alleged that the student later telephoned her and tried blackmailing her into a sexual relationship. “They even wanted her to send more photographs of the kind. When she declined, the boy threatened to upload the photographs on the social media,” he said. “They actually carried out their threat, and my sister decided that death was better than dishonour.”

The accused are students of three different schools in the district but reside in the same neighbourhood. Police said they found photographs of the woman as well as a few other girls on the accused’s phones after their arrest. “We will produce documents in court to prove that three of my clients are yet to attain the age of eighteen,” said Sharif Nawaz, their lawyer.

As her husband was employed in Odisha, the victim used to live in Chandipur with their three children and in-laws.

Earlier this month, a district court sentenced a 23-year-old man to five years in jail and a fine of Rs 9,000 for uploading nude videos of his ex-girlfriend on pornographic websites. It was the state Criminal Investigation Department’s first conviction in a cyber crime pertaining to “revenge porn”, a term used to describe sharing of sexually explicit images on the Internet with the intention of blackmailing or humiliating victims.