Hyderabad: An engineering student, who was allegedly blackmailing and extorting money from people after hacking their social media accounts, was arrested by the Rachakonda police here on Wednesday.

Aresani Bharath Kumar (21), an engineering student from Ghatkesar collected the mobile phone numbers of persons randomly from a popular classifieds website and used the numbers to log in to their social media accounts. “After gaining access, he downloaded personal photographs of people and blackmailed them to pay him,” the Cybercrime police said.

Based on a complaint from a victim from whom Bharath Kumar allegedly demanded Rs 10,000, the police arrested him. The police found that he was using an application to conceal his phone number and using a VoIP number to contact his victims.

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