Technician arrested for sending ‘lewd’ messages from customers’ cellphones

According to the Jogeshwari police, a Jogeshwari resident complained to them in June that she was receiving vulgar text messages from various numbers over a couple of weeks. The police registered a complaint against unknown persons and initiated investigations into the incident.

“We made a list of the numbers and started tracking their locations as well as the registration details of the SIM cards. Usually, it is observed that a SIM card registered to a particular person is used by a family member or even a friend, and this widened the scope of our investigations. We started tracing and questioning the users of the SIM cards from which the lewd messages had been sent,” said Police Inspector Sudhir Mahadik, Jogeshwari police station.

Meanwhile, the victim kept receiving text messages from various numbers and the police’s list of suspects kept getting longer. Finally, on Saturday, one of the suspects they brought in for questioning told them that he had recently given his cellphone for repair at a store in Jogeshwari.

“We decided to question the cellphone repair technician who runs the store and he confessed to have sent the messages. Further investigations have revealed that he has used 42 such cellphones while they were in his custody for repair work. We are investigating whether he has sent such messages to any other girl as he has said that he randomly chose the victim after seeing her number stored in a customer’s phone,” Mahadik added.

The accused, identified as Rizwan Sheikh (30) was placed under arrest following his confession.

He has been charged for outraging a woman’s modesty through electronic media under the Indian Penal Code as well as the Information Technology Act, and has been remanded to police custody till September 12, the police said.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com