Hate Campaigners on Google’s Orkut Arrested
By ITBangbug

A Lecturer of a Management Institute in Trivandrum and his Assistant have been arrested last week for making a fake profile of a Woman Students activist and posting defamatory remarks on the page while running a hate campaign against her. Ms. Sindhu Joy, the State Secretary of Students Federation of India (SFI), which is the student’s wing of a prominent political party, had filed an FIR about her fake profile and a hatred community on Orkut, being used to post derogatory statements about her. 
 
Two communities on Orkut, ‘I hate Sindhu Joy’ and ‘Time to defend’ were used to campaign and post comments against her. The owners of sites put this as ‘an effort to the persons who are interested in rethinking about the involvement of Sindhu Joy as a political figure’.
 
Sleuths from the Hi Tech Cyber Cell of Kerala Police tracked the sites to find that the IP address belonged to the Centre for Management Development Studies in Trivandrum. On request from the Cyber Crime Cell, Google gave the required information about the users. ‘I hate Sindhu Joy’  was created by the user ‘A new thought’ on 21st October, 2007 while ‘Time to defend’ was made by the user ‘Proper Action’ on 19th October, 2007.
 
It was just a matter of time before Lecturer Prasobh Kumar and his assistant Ashok Kumar, who accessed Internet from office, were picked up by the Kerala Police. The two have since confessed their initiatives on Orkut. They had used Sindhu Joy’s photographs from her fan sites. The Hard Disk has been seized and given to CDAC for data recovery and analysis. Email Tracers and other Software tools were also used for additional evidence. According to Mr. Biju Mohan, Inspector of Police (CI in charge of Hi Tech Cyber Cell), the two will be prosecuted as per various sections of CrPC, IPC and the IT Act. Meanwhile the profile used for the hate campaign has been removed from the site by Orkut.