The Cyber Crime branch of Mumbai Police on Friday arrested three youngsters from Haryana for allegedly participating in discussions on chat application Clubhouse in which derogatory comments were made against women. Later in the day, a team of Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit brought in a 20-year-old man from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh to the Capital for questioning in connection with allegedly being the main creator of the chat room, sources said.
A senior police officer said the man has been brought to the IFSO unit’s office in Delhi’s Dwarka for questioning. “He has joined the investigation on the basis of information that he might be the main creator of the chat room in question,” the officer said..
Trio identified
The youngsters have been identified as Akash Suyal (19), Jaishnav Kakkad (21) and Yashkumar alias Yash Parashar (22). Out of three, Suyal was picked up from Karnal in Haryana and has already been sent to three-day police custody. Kakkad and Yashkumar were arrested from Faridabad in Haryana and their transit remand was being processed for bringing them to Mumbai.
Suyal, who went by the ID ‘KIRA XD’, was allegedly the moderator of the Clubhouse chat room. According to the police, the trio was part of two chat rooms where participants made derogatory comments against women and also about auctioning their body parts.
Two videos of the objectionable chat went viral between January 16 and 19, after which two women came forward to register a complaint about similar offensive comments being made against them in earlier chats on October 27 and November 27 last year.
A first information report was registered under Sections 153(a), 295(a), 354(a), 354(d), 509, and 500 of Indian Penal Code and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The technical investigation into the available information led to the arrest of the three youngsters.
In a tweet on Friday, Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi praised the city police for the arrests in the case. “Kudos @MumbaiPolice, they have got cracking on the Clubhouse chats too and some arrests have been made. Say no to hate. #Clubhouse,” she said in the tweet.
