The Tiruppur City Police on Wednesday arrested a man on charges of uploading private photos of a woman, with whom he was allegedly in a relationship, without her consent on Instagram and using casteist slurs.
According to the police, the accused was identified as Iman Hameed, 23, a daily wage labourer from Mudalipalayam. The Nallur police had registered a case against him on May 5 based on a complaint from a 21-year-old woman from Karur district belonging to a Scheduled Caste.
She had claimed in her complaint that she and the accused were living together in Tiruppur after being introduced to each other through Instagram in April 2021. A few months later, he allegedly uploaded the private photos by logging into two of her Instagram profiles and used casteist slurs against her. Earlier this year, the accused allegedly circulated these photos to the woman’s friends and relatives and threatened her to give him money, she had claimed.
While the woman also claimed in her complaint that he forced her to convert to his religion, the police said on Thursday that it was not confirmed in the preliminary investigations and that further investigations were on.
Iman Hameed was booked under sections 354A (Sexual harassment) and 506(1) (Criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code, sections 66C (Identity theft), 66E (Violation of privacy) and 67A (Publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act, section 4 (Penalty for harassment of woman) of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Harassment of Woman Act and sections of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. He was remanded in judicial custody at Tiruppur district jail on Wednesday.
