The Andheri police late Wednesday arrested a college dropout, who is alleged to have hacked WhatsApp accounts and sent obscene messages and videos to over 600 women. The man’s intention was to chat with the women and lure them to meet him, said police.
Accused, Ravi Dandu (30), a resident of Dharavi, was arrested on Wednesday. He works as a data entry operator in a private bank.
Dandu was booked after a 17-year-old girl from a Mumbai college approached the police in February alleging that an unknown person had hacked her WhatsApp account and was sending obscene messages and videos to girls in her contact list.
On February 17, Dandu called up the minor and posed as a lecturer from her college, telling her that he wanted to add her to a college WhatsApp group. He tricked her into sharing a One Time Password (OTP) which he used to hack her WhatsApp account. “Based on technical analysis of his phone records and Internet-based messages, we managed to catch the accused,” Maheshwar Reddy, DCP (Zone 10), said.
“From January till July, he has sent obscene messages and videos to 610 women,” Santaji Ghorpade, Senior Inspector of Andheri police, said. The women include 60 girls from a single college and his women colleagues from the bank where he worked. “We also learnt that he had been hacking WhatsApp accounts since 2019 and was using three accounts — clone, business and personal — on a single phone,” Assistant Inspector Digambar Pagar said.
The police said they have found six to seven phones and 11 SIM cards obtained on forged documents by Dandu. In one case, he switched off the number after activating a WhatsApp account on it. He was booked for sexual harassment and stalking under sections 354 D and 509 of the IPC and Section 12 of POCSO Act.
