The Karnataka police arrested a Bengaluru-based techie on Friday for allegedly trapping women through fake Instagram handles. The accused identified as Dilleep Prasad, 28, is a resident of Koramangala in Bengaluru. The accused allegedly operated five fake Instagram accounts, posing as a woman and a manager in most of them.

Prasad used the aliases 'Monika' and 'Manager' to pretend to be a woman on social media to trick 13 women into meeting him and allegedly sexually exploiting them promising them jobs in the IT sector.

He used to chat with the victims and claimed that he could get them jobs in companies where he had ‘contacts’. He would befriend the women through the social media app and mostly targeted women from Andhra Pradesh who were unemployed and desperately seeking jobs, police sources said, as per a Times of India report.

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Prasad, who is also from Andhra Pradesh, works at a private firm in Bengaluru. He was arrested on Thursday under IPC section 376 and IT Act, 2000. The probe has revealed that he was reportedly trapping women for the past two years.

Well-paid and with significant work experience, Prasad used his position to allegedly manipulate the women into having sex with him in hotel rooms. He even filmed the act using personal electronic devices and blackmailed the victims into meeting him again, the police said.

Prasad had videos of more than 10 young women, Bengaluru Police Commissioner Pratap Reddy said in the report.

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The cybercrime cell of the police was approached by one of Prasad’s victims who lodged a complaint on January 26. Prasad is said to have told the investigating officers that he started the sex-for-jobs scam during the Covid-19 lockdown, but cops suspect that he is a habitual offender, who was possibly doing similar things since his college days.

(Edited by : Sudarsanan Mani)