After 10 Years, Karnataka Man Convicted For Sending Obscene Messages To College Friend

Karnataka witnessed its first ever cybercrime conviction in a decade-old case. According to Bangalore Mirror, a 40-year-old techie named Shivaprasad Sajjan from Rajajinagar was sentenced to two-year imprisonment and was asked to pay a fine of Rs 25000. The Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) court held the accused guilty under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act (punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) on September 7.

Accused was seeking revenge for previous enmity

Shivaprasad Sajjan was accused of sending obscene pictures and derogatory emails to a London-based HR professional who used to be in the same college as Shivaprasad in Bengaluru. It was later revealed that the same kind of obscene messages was being sent to her other colleagues too. Apparently, Sajjan was seeking revenge a previous enmity between the two. The woman filed the case in 2008.

As reported by The Times of India, police said “Shivaprasad and the woman were friends from the time they were studying in a Bengaluru college. But their relationship had soured over personal differences. The woman could not find a job and left for her hometown Delhi. Shivaprasad decided to defame the woman as she distanced herself from him. Using the computer, he morphed the woman’s pictures to create her nude photographs and emailed them to her, his friends and others.”

Accused dragged the case for 10 years

As per the report by The Hindu, the case was registered by the cyber crime wing of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in the year 2008, on the basis of a compact disk along with the formal complaint by the women. Following the complaint, police arrested the accused. After getting bail, he quit his job and studied LLB to defend his case. He managed to drag the case for 10 years by using the legal loopholes again and again. An official from CID said “He used all possible legal loopholes to drag the case. But, he could not prevent his conviction.”

The police also informed that Sajjan used the cyber cafe in Rajajinagar for the act. The police were able to track down the cyber cafe by the investigating accused’s friends and family and tracking down the email id used to send emails. The police faced many difficulties in getting the evidence as back in those days cyber cafes did not have CCTV cameras and the owners were not bothered to record the details of the cyber cafe users. “Those were the days when we didn’t have CCTVs everywhere. The café owner did not bother to note down the name or contact details of users. Finally, we tracked the convict after tracing him through the email that he had sent to many friends,” police said.

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