A two-month-long police pursuit of a cyber-stalker harassing teachers and minor girls of a prominent school in north Delhi ended earlier this week with the arrest of a 19-year old second year student from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

The man attended online classes, joined the school’s WhatsApp groups, and shared morphed photographs of the minor girls on social media . He even spoofed (falsified his caller ID) calls he made to the teachers, pretending to be different students, using voice changing apps. Police say he also created fake profiles of the minors on Instagram, and that the number of minors and teachers harassed by him number around 50.

Sagar Singh Kalsi, DCP (north) said that the man, identified as Mahavir Kumar, has been cyber-stalking women and girls in the school since 2019 , although his activities intensified after classes went online.

Kalsi added that on August 6, police received a complaint from the principal of a prominent private school in north Delhi over the cyber-stalking of students.

It emerged during the investigation that Kumar befriended one student of the school in 2019 and then, over time, several more. When classes went online, some of the girls themselves sent him links. Meanwhile, he also started harassing and threatening the girls. The girls then complained to the school.

A police officer said that when the school authorities confronted the man, he showed them screen grabs of his chat with the girls, wherein the girls themselves had given him the links to their classes. The girls were then suspended but the young man kept hacking into the online classes, which is when finally the school authorities reached out to police.

“The man was stalking minor girls and also called teachers from different international numbers. The stalker was also spoofing numbers and calling teachers from the number of the students. The stalker entered WhatsApp groups without permission of the admin and changed icons. He also posted morphed photographs of many students on different social media platforms,” said DCP Kalsi.

Delhi Police registered a case on Wednesday. During their investigation they found that stalker used at least 33 different virtual WhatsApp numbers to harass the students and teachers.

“We analysed the details of the IP logs of WhatsApp, Instagram and the email ids used to create the accounts. Through technical surveillance, we traced the suspect and arrested him from his house in Patna, Bihar,” added DCP Kalsi.

Police said they have started questioning Kumar, who has been brought to Delhi.

Kumar comes from a middle-class family of four, and his parents and elder sister had no clue he was up to something like this, police said. “He used to stay at home as his on-campus classes had not started yet. He was a second year B.Tech student,” said one police officer.

Spokespersons from IIT-Kharagpur did not respond to requests for comment.