Ahmedabad’s cybercrime branch has registered nine cases and arrested eight people under Mission Cyber Rakshika, including three minors accused of editing a 21-year-old garba influencer’s videos into defamatory clips to gain social-media followers.
Police said the teenagers allegedly created hundreds of edited videos portraying the influencer as their wife or girlfriend and, in some clips, labelling her a sex worker. The accused allegedly added objectionable messages to some posts and published the phone numbers of the woman’s parents. Police have removed around 150 videos and are working to identify and take down the remaining content.
The three accused, aged between 16 and 17, allegedly used their parents’ mobile numbers to create social-media accounts, police said. Two are Class 12 students, while the third is a school dropout who works as a daily-wage labourer. According to the cybercrime branch, the teenagers had only 400 to 500 followers and believed that editing videos of a popular influencer would increase their reach, likes and follower count.
The case forms part of a wider set of complaints being investigated under Mission Cyber Rakshika, an initiative focused on cyberstalking, online abuse, identity theft and blackmail. The complaints were filed by women who were allegedly targeted through fake accounts on Instagram and Facebook. Women police officers counselled the complainants, whose identities were kept confidential during the registration of the cases.
Police said the alleged motives in the nine cases varied. They included personal disputes, failed relationships and resentment following disagreements. In one case, a man allegedly created a fake Instagram profile using a woman’s photograph, contacted her husband’s friends while impersonating her and uploaded objectionable photographs to the account’s stories.
In another case, a man allegedly circulated a video claiming that a woman was involved in an extramarital relationship after a personal dispute. Police also alleged that a man created a fake account using a woman’s photographs and sent an objectionable video to her sister. In a separate complaint, an accused allegedly sent objectionable photographs to a woman’s fiancé after she refused to marry him.
The police also reported a case involving a woman who allegedly created a fake Instagram account in the name of a female colleague and messaged people through it. Investigators said the alleged action was linked to resentment over the colleague’s friendship with a male co-worker.
The cases show how ordinary social-media posts can be repurposed into tools for harassment, impersonation and reputational harm. For victims, the damage can extend beyond the original post when private contact details are exposed or objectionable material is sent directly to relatives, friends or prospective spouses.
The cybercrime branch said it used technical analysis of information obtained from social-media platforms to trace the accused in Ahmedabad and other parts of Gujarat and Maharashtra. It is monitoring platforms for fake accounts and objectionable content targeting women and children.
The Mission Cyber Rakshika team includes 10 women police officers. The cybercrime branch has appealed to people who encounter such content or accounts to contact the team rather than circulate the material further. Investigators are continuing efforts to remove the remaining videos and identify how the accused obtained the influencer’s parents’ phone numbers.
