In short. Do not pay a sextortion demand. Stop replying, take screenshots of the profile, chats, numbers and payment requests, then block the account. Report on cybercrime.gov.in or 1930 and at a cyber police station. Report the content to the platform; since February 2026, intermediaries must act on complaints about intimate or morphed images within two hours. Ignore callers claiming to be police who demand money.
Sextortion is extortion using sexual images, real or fake. The common pattern in Delhi NCR is a video call from a stranger, often a profile with a woman's photo, that is screen recorded and then used for a demand. Another is a set of ordinary photos, taken from your social media and morphed into explicit images. A third involves real intimate images from a past relationship. All three are crimes by the person making the threat, and the victim has done nothing that needs to be hidden from the police.
This post is about the blackmail itself: what to do, what not to do, where to report and what the law offers. If images have already been posted and you need them removed from sites and search results, our post on removing intimate images shared without consent covers the takedown process in more depth. Our cyber crime lawyer page describes the wider practice.
- Report to
- cybercrime.gov.in, 1930 helpline, or the cyber police station
- Main offences
- Extortion (BNS s.308), criminal intimidation (s.351), IT Act s.66E, 67 and 67A
- Platform takedown
- Within 2 hours of a complaint about intimate or morphed images (IT Rules, as amended in 2026)
- If you paid by UPI
- Report the payment on 1930 too; the money trail helps trace the accused
- Fake police calls
- Personating a public servant is an offence under BNS s.204
- Victim under 18
- POCSO Act and IT Act s.67B apply; report at once
Should I pay the sextortion blackmailer?
No. Paying is the single most common mistake, and it almost never ends the matter. The people running these schemes are usually organised groups working through many victims a day. When one pays, they ask again, often within hours, with a bigger figure and a new reason: the video has been 'uploaded', a 'YouTube officer' needs to be paid to remove it, or a 'police case' needs settling. Each payment confirms that you are frightened enough to keep paying.
Not paying does carry a risk that they send something to a few of your contacts. In practice, most groups move on to easier targets when a victim stops responding, because every message costs them time. Where they do send something, it is usually to a handful of followers or contacts, and a short message from you to those people, saying your account was targeted by blackmailers and asking them to delete and report it, limits the damage far more than any payment.
If you have already paid, stop now. Report the payment as well as the blackmail, because the UPI or bank trail is often the best lead the police will have. Our post on reporting a UPI fraud and recovering money explains how payments are traced and held.
What to do in the first few hours
Take these steps calmly and in this order. Saving evidence comes before blocking, because once you block, some chats and profiles become harder to capture.
Stop replying
Do not argue, plead, negotiate or explain. Do not send any further photos or join another call. Every reply gives them more material and tells them you are engaged.
Save the evidence
Take screenshots of the profile, the username and its URL, the chats, the call log with numbers, any payment demand with the UPI ID or account, and any message showing the threat. Note the date and time of each. If they sent the video to you as proof, do not forward it to anyone; leave it where it is.
Lock down your accounts
Make your social media accounts private for now, hide your friends and followers lists, and remove your phone number from public view. Change passwords and turn on two factor authentication if you think any account was accessed.
Block and report the account
After saving everything, block the person on every platform and report the account to the platform for blackmail or impersonation. If any image or video has been posted, report that content too.
Report to the police
File a complaint on cybercrime.gov.in or call 1930 if money was paid, and go to the cyber police station with your screenshots and a written complaint. Keep the acknowledgment or FIR number.
Tell one person you trust
Sextortion works by isolating the victim. Telling a spouse, sibling, parent or close friend takes away most of the blackmailer's power, and gives you someone to help with the next steps.
How sextortion calls usually work
The approach usually starts with a friend request or message on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp or a dating app, from a profile that looks friendly and is often new. After a short chat, the profile makes a video call, sometimes at night. What appears on the screen may be a pre-recorded clip. The victim's face and reactions are screen recorded. Within minutes, the victim receives the recording, a list of his own contacts or followers, and a demand for money, often a few thousand rupees to begin with.
The second stage follows within hours or days. A new number calls, claiming to be from the Delhi Police crime branch, the CBI, a cyber cell or 'YouTube'. The caller says a complaint has been filed, the video has been uploaded, or the 'girl' has complained, and demands a much larger amount to close the case or remove the video. Some callers send fake notices or FIR copies with official looking seals. None of this is real. The pattern is close to what our post on digital arrest scam calls describes.
The morphed image version is simpler. The blackmailer takes ordinary photos from your public profile, uses an editing or AI tool to create an explicit image, and threatens to send it to your family, employer or college. Women are the most frequent targets of this version, and loan app recovery agents have used it too. The images are fake, and the law treats creating and circulating them as a serious offence.
Will they really send the video to my family or post it online?
Sometimes they send it to a few contacts; more often they threaten and then move on. They usually have your followers list because the profile was public, and they may send a clip or screenshot to two or three people to show they are serious. Mass posting is less common, because platforms remove such content quickly once reported, and the group gains nothing from it.
The best protection is to reduce what they can reach. Make your accounts private, hide your followers and friends lists, and, if you think it necessary, warn a few close contacts in a calm, short message: someone is trying to blackmail you with a fake or private video, and if they receive anything, they should not open it, should delete it and should report the sender. People are far more understanding than victims fear, and most have heard of these scams.
If content does appear on a platform or website, report it at once and keep the link. The platform's obligations, and the timelines, are set out further below.
What the law says about sextortion
Section 308, BNS (extortion)
Putting a person in fear of injury, including injury to reputation, to make them hand over money or property is extortion. A threat to share a private video unless you pay is a straightforward case. It replaced section 383 and related sections of the IPC for offences from 1 July 2024.
Section 351, BNS (criminal intimidation)
Threatening a person with injury to their reputation to make them do something they are not legally bound to do. It applies even where no money is actually paid.
Section 66E, 67 and 67A, IT Act
Section 66E punishes capturing or transmitting images of a person's private area without consent. Section 67 punishes publishing or transmitting obscene material electronically, and section 67A punishes sexually explicit material, with higher punishment. Circulating or threatening to circulate a recording or a morphed image usually brings these sections in.
Sections 77 and 78, BNS (voyeurism and stalking)
Where the victim is a woman, capturing or sharing images of her private acts without consent is voyeurism, and repeatedly contacting her online despite clear disinterest, or monitoring her online activity, can be stalking. These sit alongside the IT Act offences.
Section 204 and 319, BNS (fake officers)
A caller pretending to be a police or CBI officer commits the offence of personating a public servant under section 204, and cheating by personation under section 319 if money is taken. These apply to the second stage calls.
POCSO Act 2012 and IT Act s.67B
Where the victim is under 18, any sexual image is child sexual abuse material. The POCSO Act and section 67B of the IT Act apply, with special courts and child friendly procedure, and anyone who knows of it is required to report.
How do I report sextortion to the police?
File a complaint on cybercrime.gov.in, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and visit the cyber police station of your district with a written complaint and printed screenshots. If money was paid, also call 1930 so the payment can be traced and held. Keep the complaint brief and factual: who contacted you, on which platform, what was recorded or created, what was demanded, what you paid if anything, and the numbers, IDs and accounts involved. You do not need to describe what happened on the call in detail; say that a private video call was recorded without your consent.
In Delhi, every police district has a cyber police station, and the Delhi Police IFSO unit handles larger and organised cases. In Noida and Ghaziabad, the police commissionerates have their own cyber crime police stations. Women complainants can ask that their statement be recorded by a woman officer. Ask for an FIR; extortion and the IT Act offences are cognizable. If the police are reluctant, a written complaint to the DCP, with proof of delivery, is the next step.
Many victims hesitate because they fear the police will judge them or that the complaint will become public. Police in Delhi NCR now see these cases every day. The complaint and the evidence are part of a police record, not a public one. In rape and certain other sexual offences the law bars disclosure of the victim's identity, and police and courts are generally careful with complainants' privacy in all such cases. If you want, an advocate can accompany you or draft the complaint so that it says only what it needs to.
Where to report, and what each step does
| Where | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| The platform's report button | Removes the blackmailer's account or posted content under the platform's policies | Immediately, after saving evidence |
| Platform grievance officer | Formal complaint under the IT Rules; for intimate or morphed images, action within 2 hours | If the report button does not work or content stays up |
| 1930 helpline | Traces and holds money you paid | If you made any payment |
| cybercrime.gov.in | Records the complaint and sends it to the police; has a separate section for crimes against women and children | Within the first day |
| Cyber police station | Registers the FIR and investigates | Within the first few days, with printed evidence |
| Grievance Appellate Committee | Appeal against a platform's grievance decision | Within 30 days if the platform refuses or ignores you |
| Court | Injunction against publication, or orders to platforms and search engines | Where content keeps reappearing or a specific person is behind it |
How to get the video or images taken down
Report the content to the platform first, and then complain to its grievance officer if it is not removed. Under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, when an individual complains that content shows them in a state of nudity or a sexual act, or is an impersonation including artificially morphed images, the platform must remove or disable it. The February 2026 amendment, in force from 20 February 2026, cut the time for this from 24 hours to two hours. Every significant platform has a grievance officer whose contact details are on its website.
If the platform does not act, you can appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee set up by the Central Government, within 30 days of the platform's decision. For content that keeps reappearing, tools such as StopNCII, which create a digital fingerprint of an image so that participating platforms can block it without anyone viewing it, can help adults; for anyone under 18, similar tools exist through child protection organisations. The police can also send removal requests to platforms during investigation.
The same 2026 amendment introduced rules on synthetically generated content, requiring labelling of AI generated material and stricter action on unlawful deepfakes. That helps victims of morphed images, because platforms can no longer treat a fake explicit image as a grey area. Our post on removing intimate images shared without consent goes through the takedown process step by step, including search engines.
Evidence to save before you block anyone
About the blackmailer
- Profile screenshots showing name, username and URL
- Phone numbers used for calls and WhatsApp
- UPI IDs, account numbers or QR codes sent for payment
- Any email address or other account they used
About the threat
- Chats showing the demand and the threat, with dates and times
- Call log entries, including video calls
- Any fake notice, FIR or 'officer' ID card sent to you
- Voice notes or recorded calls, if you have them
About any payment
- Bank or UPI transaction screenshots with UTR numbers
- Bank statement showing the debits
- 1930 or portal acknowledgment number
About posted content
- Links to any post, page or video
- Screenshots of the post with the date visible
- Platform report numbers and grievance acknowledgments
- Names of contacts who received anything, and when
A made-up example: the late night video call
Here's a made-up example. Rohit, 34, works in Noida. A new Instagram follower with a woman's photo messages him, and after a short chat makes a video call late at night. Two minutes later, he receives a screen recording of the call and screenshots of his followers list, with a demand for ₹15,000. Panicking, he pays. Within an hour, a demand for ₹40,000 arrives, and the next morning a man calling himself a Delhi Police inspector says a case has been registered and will be closed for ₹1.5 lakh.
Rohit stops replying, takes screenshots of everything, and tells his brother. He makes his account private, hides his followers list, blocks the numbers and reports the profile. He calls 1930 about the ₹15,000 and files a complaint at the cyber crime police station in Noida with printed screenshots, the UPI IDs and the numbers. An FIR is registered for extortion, personating a public servant and offences under the IT Act.
Two of his followers receive a short clip the next day. His brother had already helped him send a message to close contacts warning of the blackmail attempt, so both delete it and report the sender. The calls stop within a week. Part of the ₹15,000 is found held in a mule account, and Rohit applies for its release through the police. The 'inspector' never existed.
The fake police officer who calls next
Any call demanding money to 'close a case', 'remove a video from YouTube' or 'settle with the girl's family' is part of the same fraud. Real police officers do not settle cases for money over the phone, do not ask you to pay into a UPI ID, and do not conduct enquiries by video call while threatening immediate arrest. A real notice under the BNSS comes in writing, names the police station and officer, and asks you to appear; it does not ask for payment.
If you receive such a call, do not argue or confirm anything. Note the number and any name or rank given, take screenshots of any 'notice' sent to you, and add them to your complaint. If you are unsure whether a notice is genuine, call the police station named on it using a number from the official Delhi Police or UP Police website, not the number on the notice. Impersonating a police officer is a separate offence, and these calls often give the police more traceable leads than the original contact.
When the victim is a teenager
Teenagers, particularly boys of 14 to 17, are now frequent targets, and they are the least likely to tell anyone. If your child is being blackmailed, the first thing they need to hear is that they are not in trouble. The blackmailer relies on the child's fear of parents more than fear of the police. Then take the same steps: save evidence without viewing or sharing the images, stop contact, report to the platform, and report to the police.
Any sexual image of a person under 18 is child sexual abuse material under the POCSO Act and section 67B of the IT Act, regardless of who made it. That makes it a far more serious matter for the blackmailer, and the police treat it with priority. Do not forward the images to anyone, even to show the police; let the police collect them from the device. The portal has a dedicated section for crimes involving children, and schools increasingly have counsellors who can help the child afterwards.
When the images are of a woman, from a past relationship or morphed
Where a former partner or someone known to the woman holds real intimate images and threatens to share them, the case is stronger and the accused easier to find. Voyeurism and stalking under the BNS, sections 66E and 67A of the IT Act and extortion or intimidation may all apply, and if the man is a husband or relative, the domestic violence law may give additional protection orders. The complaint can be filed at the cyber police station or the local police station, and the statement can be recorded by a woman officer.
In morphed image cases, the fact that the images are fake does not reduce the offence. Keep the original photos from which the images were made, if you can identify them, because they show the manipulation. Our page on sexual harassment and rape cases describes how we handle such complaints with care for the complainant's privacy.
Can the police actually catch them?
Sometimes, and more often than victims assume, but not in every case. Many groups operate from a few districts in north India using SIM cards and bank accounts in other people's names; some operate from abroad. The traceable points are the payment trail, the SIM cards and their location records, and the platform accounts, which the police can ask the platforms to disclose under section 94 of the BNSS. Police in several states have arrested such groups after linking many complaints to the same accounts.
Your complaint matters even if your own case does not lead to an arrest. It adds the numbers and accounts to the national database, which helps link cases and get numbers and accounts blocked. For your own protection, the more important result of the complaint is the record it creates, which helps if the content surfaces later or if the blackmailer is caught in another case.
Mistakes that make sextortion worse
- Paying to make it stop. It rarely stops. The demand grows and the fake police calls begin.
- Deleting everything in panic. Delete nothing until you have screenshots. The chats and numbers are your evidence.
- Hiring a 'hacker' to delete the video. People advertising that they can hack the blackmailer's phone are usually scammers themselves, and paying them is another loss.
- Calling the number back to plead. It gives them more recordings and a stronger hold over you.
- Believing a 'deletion proof' video. Blackmailers send screen recordings of a file being deleted. They keep other copies.
- Keeping it secret. Telling one trusted person takes away most of the pressure and helps you act clearly.
Have I done anything wrong by being on the call?
Being recorded without your consent is not an offence by you. The offences are the recording, the threat, the demand and any circulation, and those are the blackmailer's. Victims often fear that the police will treat them as wrongdoers, and that fear is exactly what the blackmailer is counting on. In the many sextortion complaints the police handle, the victim is treated as the complainant.
Where a victim, believing he was talking to an adult, is later told the other person was a minor, this is almost always part of the script to frighten him into paying more. When Advocate B.K. Singh hears this claim in a sextortion file, he looks first at whether the 'complaint' or 'notice' mentioned exists anywhere in police records, and in practice it rarely does. If you are genuinely worried about your own position, take advice before you make any statement, but do not let the claim stop you from reporting.
What to do this week if you are being blackmailed
- Stop all contact with the blackmailer and do not pay
- Take screenshots of the profile, chats, numbers, demands and payment details
- Make your accounts private and hide friends and followers lists
- Block and report the account and any posted content on the platform
- Call 1930 about any money paid and file on cybercrime.gov.in
- File a written complaint at the cyber police station and ask for an FIR
- Tell one trusted person, and warn close contacts briefly if you think it necessary
- Ignore any caller claiming to be police who asks for money, and add the number to your complaint
Getting legal help
Most victims can report and follow up on their own, and should do so without waiting. Legal help is useful when the police are slow to register an FIR, when the blackmailer is someone known to you, when content keeps reappearing and a court order against platforms or a named person is needed, or when the victim is a child and the family wants someone to handle the police and school with care. It is also useful when a blackmailer has hacked an account to get the images; our post on a hacked email or social media account covers that side.
If you would like an advocate to read the messages and draft the complaint, the team of Advocate B.K. Singh can do that in confidence and tell you what to expect from the police. You can write to us through the online legal enquiry page. Our page on cyber laws lists the other online issues we handle, and if someone has created a profile in your name to target your contacts, see fake profiles and impersonation online.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do if someone is blackmailing me with a video call recording?
Stop replying and do not pay. Save screenshots of the profile, chats, numbers and payment demands, then block and report the account. File a complaint on cybercrime.gov.in and at the cyber police station.
Will the blackmailer stop if I pay once?
Almost never. Paying usually leads to a bigger demand within hours and then calls from fake police officers. Stopping all contact is what usually makes these groups move on.
Can I file a sextortion complaint without giving my name publicly?
Your complaint and statement are part of a police record, not a public document. For rape and certain other sexual offences, the law bars disclosure of the victim's identity. The portal also allows anonymous reports of material involving children.
How quickly must Instagram or Facebook remove a morphed or intimate image?
Under the IT Rules as amended in February 2026, a platform must act within two hours of a complaint by the person shown, where the content shows nudity or a sexual act or is a morphed impersonation. Use the platform's report option and its grievance officer, and keep the acknowledgment.
Is sextortion a crime in India?
Yes. It is extortion under section 308 of the BNS, criminal intimidation under section 351, and usually offences under sections 66E, 67 and 67A of the IT Act. If the victim is under 18, the POCSO Act also applies.
A man claiming to be from Delhi Police crime branch is asking for money. Is it real?
No genuine police officer will ask you to pay money to close a case or remove a video. It is part of the blackmail. Note the number, save any 'notice', and add it to your complaint.
I already paid the blackmailer. Can I get the money back?
Possibly, if you report quickly. Call 1930 or file on cybercrime.gov.in so the payment can be traced and any amount still in the receiving account held. Report the blackmail too, because the payment trail helps the police.
Should I delete my social media account?
Not usually. Deleting it removes evidence and does not stop the blackmailer from contacting your friends by other means. Make the account private, hide your friends and followers lists, and keep the evidence.
What if the blackmailer says the girl on the call was a minor?
This is a common script to frighten victims into paying more, and the 'complaint' mentioned almost never exists. Do not pay. If you are genuinely worried about your own position, take legal advice before making a statement.
Can the police trace sextortion callers?
Often, through the payment trail, SIM records and platform data, though groups using accounts in others' names or operating abroad are harder to catch. Your complaint also helps link cases and get the numbers blocked.
My teenage son is being blackmailed. What should I do?
Reassure him that he is not in trouble, stop all contact, save evidence without viewing or forwarding images, and report to the platform and the police. Images of anyone under 18 bring in the POCSO Act, which the police treat with priority.
Do I need a lawyer to file a sextortion complaint?
No, you can file it yourself on the portal and at the cyber police station. A lawyer helps where the police are slow, where the blackmailer is known to you, where content keeps reappearing, or where you need a court order against platforms.
Written and reviewed at B.K. Singh & Associates
Advocate B.K. Singh
Founder of B.K. Singh & Associates. MCA, LL.B., LL.M., with more than twenty years of practice before the Supreme Court, the Delhi High Court, district courts and tribunals across Delhi NCR. This article explains the general law as of 24 October 2026; it is not legal advice on your facts.