Sextortion in India: What to Do, How to Complain, and the Punishment

What sextortion is, and why the first hour decides most of it

It comes in three shapes. The first is someone you know, usually a former partner, who holds images you shared in a relationship and uses them to demand money, a meeting or a reconciliation. The second is a stranger who obtained the images from a hacked email or cloud account, a lost or repaired phone, or an online relationship built to persuade you to share. The third is organised fraud: a video call from a stranger, an explicit clip on the other side, your face recorded, and a demand for money within minutes. The steps below apply to all three, and the third has its own section.

The first hour matters because the blackmailer's leverage rests on things you can still control. Messages can be unsent or deleted for everyone, so evidence you do not capture now may not exist later. A payment made in panic tells the other side that you will pay again. And an account reported while the conversation is still on your screen is easier to act on than one that has since been renamed or deleted.

The three rules, in one line: do not pay, do not delete evidence, do not negotiate. Not negotiating means no bargaining, no pleading, no threats in return and no further images sent to buy time; every reply tells the blackmailer the pressure is working. Then tell one person you trust, because sextortion depends on isolating its target. If you feel unsafe or overwhelmed, call Tele-MANAS on 14416, the government's mental-health helpline, or 112 in an emergency.

Do not pay: what happens to victims who do

Paying does not buy silence. A payment tells the blackmailer that the threat works and that you have money, and what usually follows is a second demand, sometimes from a new number or from someone claiming to be a lawyer or an official. There is also nothing to buy: no one can prove that a file has been deleted, so a payment purchases a promise that cannot be checked.

The law does not wait for money to change hands. Under s.308(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 (BNS), putting a person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion is itself an offence, punishable with up to two years, or fine, or both, whether or not anything is paid. The same threat is criminal intimidation under s.351. If money is handed over, the offence is extortion, punishable under s.308(2) with up to seven years, or fine, or both. Not paying does not weaken your complaint: the case exists from the first threatening message.

If you have already paid, do not pay again, however the next demand is framed. Call 1930, the national cyber crime helpline, as soon as you can, and keep the transaction reference, the UPI ID, QR code or account number you paid into, and the screenshots of the demand for your complaint. What happens to the money after that is a matter for the police and your bank.

Be clear about what help looks like. RepuLex does not recover money, identify the scammer or stop the extortionist. That is police work. Anyone who offers, for a fee, to track the blackmailer down, get into their phone or buy the file back is offering you a second loss. RepuLex's work begins if something is posted, which is covered further down.

WhatsApp video-call blackmail: what to do in the first hour

The video-call scam, often called a honey trap, follows a script. A friendly message or friend request from a stranger moves quickly to WhatsApp, or the call comes with no introduction at all. An explicit clip plays on the other side while your face is recorded, and within minutes a screen recording arrives with a demand for money, often with screenshots of your friends list to show whom it will reach. The person on screen is usually a recording or a paid front; the demands come from an organised group working many people at once.

Later calls may come from someone posing as a police officer, a cyber cell official or a YouTube employee, saying a case has been registered or the video uploaded, and offering to settle it for a fee. That is the same operation. No police officer settles a case over WhatsApp for a payment.

In the first hour, do not reply and do not pay. Screenshot the number, the profile name and picture, the whole chat, the demand, any UPI ID, QR code or bank account they send, and your call log showing the time of the call. Keep the recording they sent and the chat. Then report the number inside WhatsApp and block it. Hide your Facebook friends list and make your Instagram account private, because the threat depends on knowing whom to send the clip to. Some people also warn one or two close contacts in advance, so that a message from a stranger lands with no effect; that choice is yours.

Report it on cybercrime.gov.in. The portal's option to report without identifying yourself sits in its section for crimes against women and children, so most adult men will file through the registered route, which asks for a mobile number and lets you track the complaint. If money has been sent, call 1930 as well, quickly. If you are an adult and they sent you the clip, you can hash it through StopNCII so that partner platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can block it; WhatsApp is not a partner, so the hash does nothing there.

If the clip reaches your contacts, be realistic about what can be undone. No one can delete a WhatsApp message already on another person's phone; anyone promising that is not being truthful. What can be removed is the public distribution: channels, links and hosted files. If the clip is uploaded anywhere public, the two-hour rule and the removal sweep described below apply.

Is sextortion a crime in India? The sections that go on your complaint

Yes. Indian law has no offence called sextortion; the conduct is charged under several provisions at once, and a complaint that names them helps the police record it correctly. The core is extortion under s.308 of the BNS: putting a person in fear of injury, including injury to reputation, to obtain money or property. The section's first illustration is a threat to publish a defamatory libel unless money is paid, and another is a threat sent through an electronic device; between them they describe most sextortion messages.

Where the demand is for more images, a video call or a meeting rather than money, the threat is criminal intimidation under s.351: a threat, by any means, to injure a person's reputation to make them do something they are not legally bound to do. The punishment rises to seven years where the threat is, among others, to impute unchastity to a woman, and an anonymous threat, or one whose sender conceals who they are, carries up to two years more. Where the person in the images is a woman, voyeurism under s.77, stalking under s.78 and s.79 may also apply. Explanation 2 to s.77 matters in ex-partner cases: consent to the capture of an image is not consent to its dissemination.

The Information Technology Act 2000 adds offences that apply whatever the victim's gender: s.66E for capturing, publishing or transmitting an image of a private area without consent, and ss.67 and 67A for publishing or transmitting obscene or sexually explicit material electronically. Section 77B of the Act makes offences punishable with three years or more cognizable, and those punishable with three years bailable. Classified by the first-conviction term, that makes ss.66E and 67 cognizable and bailable, and ss.67A and 67B cognizable and non-bailable.

Many people still search by the old Indian Penal Code numbers. The BNS replaced the IPC on 1 July 2024, and an offence committed before that date is still charged under the IPC; the table maps each provision to its predecessor.

How to report sextortion in India: cybercrime.gov.in, 1930 and the police station

An online blackmail complaint can be made in three ways, and you can use more than one. The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, cybercrime.gov.in, takes complaints online: its section for crimes against women and children offers a report without identifying yourself as well as one you can track, and everyone else, including most adult men, files through the registered route with a mobile number. You can attach screenshots and you receive a complaint number to quote later. The complaint is free, and it is your own: RepuLex does not file FIRs or police complaints.

1930 is the National Cyber Crime Reporting helpline. The MeitY Standard Operating Procedure on non-consensual intimate imagery, released on 11 November 2025, lists it with the portal, the platform's grievance officer or report button, the Grievance Appellate Committee, local police and One Stop Centres, which support women affected by violence. Call 1930 at once if you have sent money.

You can also walk into any police station, or the cyber police station where your city has one. Under s.173(1) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita 2023, information about a cognizable offence can be given at any police station irrespective of the area where the offence was committed, orally or by electronic communication; information given electronically must be signed by you within three days. This is the Zero FIR. The IT Act offences in most sextortion cases are cognizable under s.77B, so you do not need to know where the blackmailer is, which you usually cannot.

The courts have pressed for speed in exactly these cases: in Mrs X v. Union of India, decided on 26 April 2023, the Delhi High Court gave directions to platforms, search engines and the police for prompt action on non-consensual intimate images. In the complaint itself, set out who contacted you and on which platform, the account name, number or link, the date and time of each threat, what was demanded, whether anything was paid and into which account, whether anything has been posted and where, and the sections in the table above. Describe the intimate material rather than attaching it, share the image itself only with the investigating officer if asked, and keep the acknowledgement or FIR number.

Someone is threatening to leak my photos: what to do before anything is posted

If you are 18 or over now, and were 18 or over when the images were taken, StopNCII.org can act before a single upload. It is run by the Revenge Porn Helpline, part of SWGfL, a UK charity; it is free and needs no account. You select the images or videos on your own phone or computer, the tool generates a hash, a digital fingerprint, on the device, and only the hash is shared: the image never leaves your device. Participating platforms check new uploads against the hash and can block a match. It covers images that have only been threatened, which is exactly this situation.

Know its limits. Its partners, as listed in September 2026, include Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat, Bluesky, Microsoft's Bing, Pornhub and xVideos; Telegram, Google Search, YouTube and WhatsApp are not partners, so a hash does nothing there. It needs you to hold the images, and an edited or re-recorded copy may not match the hash. StopNCII gives you a case number and password to check your case online; keep both, as there is no phone line. Our StopNCII guide walks through each step.

Then deal with the account making the threat: capture it, report the account and the specific messages to the platform, then block. Make your accounts private, hide friends and followers lists where the app allows it, and change your passwords, starting with email and cloud storage, with two-step verification on. If you suspect the images came from a hacked account or backup, say so in the police complaint.

People often ask whether Instagram blackmailers follow through. Some do. There is no reliable way to tell which ones will, and a promise to delete is worth no more than the threat that came before it. Treat every threat as if it will be carried out: file the police complaint, set up StopNCII if it applies to you, and know in advance what you will do if a file appears, which is the section on posted content below.

Instagram, Snapchat and Telegram: where the threat arrives and how to report it

Most threats arrive in a direct message, and the order is the same everywhere: capture, report, block. Report before you block, because on some apps blocking removes the conversation from your screen, and with it the easiest way to report the exact messages. Do not reply to announce that you have reported the account or gone to the police; stop all contact.

On Instagram and Facebook, report the specific messages and the account from inside the conversation, then block. Both are StopNCII partners, so an adult's hash covers both. If anything is posted there, the complaint that carries the two-hour clock goes to the grievance officer Meta lists for India, by you or someone on your behalf; our Instagram page sets out that route.

Snapchat is widely used by teenagers, so many people reading this will be under 18 or the parent of someone who is. If the person in the images is under 18, RepuLex refuses the matter as an engagement and routes it to the police and cybercrime.gov.in, for the reasons in the last section. For adults: Snapchat chats can disappear once viewed, so capture them at once. Snapchat tells the other person when you screenshot a chat; if that worries you, photograph the screen with another phone, but capture it either way. Then report the account and the chat in the app.

Telegram threats often come from accounts that change their username or delete the conversation for both sides, so capture the chat with the username, display name and any visible phone number. Report the user or chat in the app; illegal content can also be reported to abuse@telegram.org. Telegram is not a StopNCII partner. If a file is posted to a Telegram channel or group, the complaint goes to Telegram's abuse desk and to the grievance officer Telegram lists for India, and our Telegram page sets out how channels and hosted files are taken down.

If anything has already been posted: the two-hour rule and the paid sweep

Once a file is public, the law provides a fast lane. Rule 3(2)(b) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 requires an intermediary to remove or disable access to content that exposes a person's private area, shows full or partial nudity or a sexual act, or impersonates them, including artificially morphed images, within two hours of a complaint by that person or someone on their behalf. The two-hour window was substituted by G.S.R. 120(E), notified on 10 February 2026 and in force from 20 February 2026; it was 24 hours before that. If a grievance officer rejects the complaint, an appeal lies to the Grievance Appellate Committee at gac.gov.in.

Google Search has a separate request, 'Remove personal sexual content from Google Search', covering intimate images shared without consent and fake or synthetic explicit images of the person asking. It hides the result without taking the file off the site, so it runs alongside the host complaints, never instead of them. The major international adult sites act on a correctly filed non-consensual-content report typically within 24 to 48 hours. Where you took the photograph or recorded the video yourself, the Copyright Act 1957 treats you as its author, and a copyright notice is a further route against hosts outside India.

This is where RepuLex's paid work begins. On day one of the sweep, complaints go to every platform and host carrying the file: Rule 3(2)(b) complaints to Indian-regulated platforms, non-consensual-content reports to the adult sites and file hosts, and Google's request for Search. You are walked through creating StopNCII hashes on your own device, because the image must never leave it. Then the spread is mapped, because leaked files move to mirrors, file lockers and Telegram channels within days. Where a host refuses, notices under an advocate's signature and court applications are handled by RepuLex's partner law firm, Unified Chambers And Associates, and a court order can then be executed through the government's blocking procedure to make a URL unreachable from Indian networks.

RepuLex's own working target is same-day: a complaint filed against every located copy within 24 hours of instruction. It is a target we hold ourselves to, not a guarantee, because what follows depends on each host. This is a paid service, quoted as a sweep across every located copy once the spread is mapped, with concessional rates for individuals and no emergency surcharge in this category. Fees are payable in advance, and any URL not removed within its agreed timeline is refunded in full. Send us only the URLs, never the file.

The sextortion email scam: 'we recorded you through your webcam'

A different thing arrives by email: a message claiming that your device was hacked, that you were recorded through your webcam while watching adult content, and that the video goes to your contacts unless you pay, usually in cryptocurrency, by a deadline. It is bulk phishing. To look credible it may quote one of your real passwords, which usually comes from an old data breach of some website rather than from your device. The email is the whole scam; there is nothing to remove.

Do not pay and do not reply. Change the password it quotes, and the password on every account where you have used it, and switch on two-step verification. Mark the email as phishing, and report it on cybercrime.gov.in if you want it on record. If a message shows something that could only have come from your device, such as a real image, treat it as the sextortion described above.

Can I sue? Civil remedies and what the partner law firm does

Yes, alongside the criminal complaint. Privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21, as the Supreme Court held in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), and publishing or threatening to publish intimate images supports a civil suit for an injunction restraining publication and directing removal, with a claim for damages. Where false imputations are published, civil defamation and criminal defamation under s.356 of the BNS are available too. A writ petition in the High Court seeking directions to the government, platforms and search engines is a further route, the one taken in Mrs X v. Union of India.

A court can order platforms and search engines to remove and de-index the material, restrain the person from publishing it, and in a civil suit direct a platform to disclose details of the account behind a publication. That is a court process, not a way to unmask an organised scam group, which remains police work. Damages are never promised: against an anonymous group abroad a suit rarely has a defendant worth pursuing, while against an identifiable former partner a notice under an advocate's signature and an injunction are often the practical remedies.

Notices alone have limits. Under s.79 of the IT Act a platform keeps its safe harbour until it has 'actual knowledge', which the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) read as a court order or a government notification, not a private notice from anyone, an advocate included. That is why the Rule 3(2)(b) complaint and, where a host refuses, a court order carry the weight.

Who does what matters here. RepuLex is an online reputation management agency, not a law firm. Notices under an advocate's signature, court filings, injunction and identity-disclosure applications, and appearances are the work of its partner law firm, Unified Chambers And Associates. The partner firm's advocates can help you prepare the police complaint, but filing it remains your own act, and RepuLex does not file FIRs.

If the person in the images is under 18

Any intimate image of a person under 18 is child sexual abuse material, and a threat involving it is a matter for the police, not a reputation matter. RepuLex refuses these matters as engagements and routes them to the police and to cybercrime.gov.in, whose section for crimes against women and children takes reports of child sexual abuse material, including without identifying yourself. We will tell you where to report; we will not handle it quietly.

The law treats it more severely. Section 67B of the IT Act punishes publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts with up to five years and a fine up to ₹10 lakh on first conviction, and up to seven years on a subsequent conviction, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act 2012 applies alongside it. Do not use StopNCII for images of anyone under 18; it is built for adults.

If you are a parent, stay calm with your child and make sure they know they are not in trouble, because shame is what the blackmailer relies on. Do not pay. Do not copy, forward or send the image to anyone, including us; capture the threats, the account and the demand, and let the police collect the rest. If you are under 18 and reading this yourself, tell a parent or another adult you trust today. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 112.