Dubai: A postman landed in trouble when he attempted to sexually blackmail his former lover after mistakenly sending her nude photos to a policeman’s phone on WhatsApp, heard a court on Wednesday.
An off-duty policeman was said to have received on his private phone number a set of nude images and video clips of an unknown woman and messages via WhatsApp in December.
Obviously mistaking the recipient for the unidentified woman, the sender forwarded the indecent clips and photos of that woman, according to records, and threatened to post them on social media. When the woman’s name was seen in the messages, the off-duty policeman alerted the sender that he was not that woman and asked him to stop communicating with him because it was a matter of mistaken identity and wrong number.
When the policeman informed the sender that he is a man and not a woman and told him his real name, the sender threatened to post the images on social media and the internet.
The off-duty policeman, thereafter, pretended to be that woman and lured the sender to meet him at a certain place and in the meantime, he reported the matter to the police.
The investigation carried out by Dubai Police’s cybercrime section identified the sender as the 34-year-old Egyptian postman.
The postman was summoned to the police for further investigation where he claimed that he had sent the images and clips by mistake. He said during interrogation that the policeman’s number was very similar to that of the woman to whom he had intended to forward the messages and clips.
Prosecutors accused the suspect of attempting to blackmail a woman via WhatsApp by threatening to post her indecent images on social media and breaching her privacy and modesty by misusing the telecommunication system and forwarding those images via WhatsApp.
According to the accusation sheet, prosecutors identified the woman only by her first name.
The suspect pleaded not guilty when he appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday.
The off-duty policeman testified to prosecutors: “After I received the images, I asked the suspect from where he obtained my phone number and he said that he got it from his workplace. He asked me if I was a woman [gave me a name] … I told him my real name and that he had forwarded the images to the wrong number. Then he sent a text message in which he threatened that he would post those images on social media. The images contained photos of a naked woman and sexy dancing clips.”
A police lieutenant, who questioned the suspect, told prosecutors: “The suspect claimed that he knew the woman and had been having a sexual affair with her in Abu Dhabi. He claimed that he ditched her and demanded her to stop contacting him because he wanted to marry.”
He was also cited as telling prosecutors that he forwarded the images by mistake to the policeman as he got one figure wrong as he couldn’t remember the woman’s correct number.
The trial continues.
