‘Suicidal thoughts strike every day’: India’s sextortion scourge

Al Jazeera :
Shyam, a truck driver in northern India’s city of Prayagraj, had not had sex with his pregnant wife for six months when he saw an advertisement on the Telegram messaging app promising to make his fantasies come true.
Shyam, 44, was impressed by the ad’s formal tone and eagerly followed a link to a pink-themed website, where he was asked to pay a registration fee of 4,000 Indian rupees ($48.28).
Shyam made the payment at his local bank and returned home excitedly to access the website, only to be asked to pay an additional 6,000 rupees ($72.44) for every session of cyber-sex. He paid the sum and was told to wait for a video call during the next 24 hours.
A few hours later, Shyam received a video call from an unknown number. Removing his shirt, Shyam stood in front of his phone’s camera and answered. After a few seconds, a naked young woman touching herself appeared on the screen. Then the call was cut short.
As Shyam tried to figure out what had happened, he received a WhatsApp message from the same number along with a recording of the video call. The message came with a threat: Deposit 15,000 rupees ($181) to this bank account within 24 hours or this video will go viral.
Shyam estimated it would take him 10-12 months to save up that amount with his monthly salary of 20,000 rupees ($241), which is barely enough to support his family of four.
“My finances were already running dry, so I had to use the money I was saving for my son’s tuition,” Shyam told Al Jazeera, speaking on the condition that he be referred to by a pseudonym. “My relief was short-lived as the payment was followed by calls and SMS messages blackmailing me to deposit 30,000 rupees ($362.14), which I eventually did by borrowing from friends.” Shyam is among the growing number of victims of online sextortion in India. Once a phenomenon associated with public figures in Bollywood and politics, such scams have become more prevalent across all sections of Indian society alongside the ubiquitous rise of smartphones and fast internet. While statistics on online sextortion scams are not available, 52,974 cybercrimes were reported in India in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), up from 44,735 cases in 2019.