There is a thin line between sanity and insanity, and people often do not realise when they cross over to the other side. A lot of us do not understand what love is. We misinterpret other people’s words and actions and believe they’re in love with us. Or should I say, they’re ‘asking for it’?
There is also a thin line between pursuing someone you love and STALKING a stranger because you think you love them.
A Mumbai man was recently arrested by the police after a woman registered a complaint against him for stalking her for eight years. EIGHT LONG YEARS.
According to a report in Mid-day, the accused identified as Abhijit Mukherjee is a 25-year-old IT professional living in Malad, Mumbai. He works at a multinational software company in BKC.
Abhijit stalked the woman online and sent her a request the day she opened a Tinder account. He then hacked into her account to swipe left for anyone trying to befriend her.
The trouble began when the woman set up her account on 1st March. Abhijit sent her a ‘like’ and then asked her to meet him near the Haji Ali Dargah. The 26-year-old woman did not wish to meet him, but she agreed after he persisted.
When she went to meet him, he started describing events from her personal life and also revealed that he knew her exact bank details. He even professed his ‘love’ for her and told her he had been monitoring her for eight years.
The woman was obviously shocked to hear a stranger know so much of her private information. A police official said,
“During their meeting, he told her that he had been working in the company’s technical department since December 2017 and even described to her how he had been monitoring her on Tinder and, with the help of a flash link, would swipe left on every ‘like’ she received from other men.”
Although she deleted her Tinder account the very same day, she met him twice after that to know what more information he had on her. After that, she tried to distance herself from him by not replying to calls or requests to meet.
However, he used different SIM cards to get through to her and even posed as a journalist once.
Things got out of hand when he started threatening and abusing her. He warned her not to talk to anybody because he loved her and will not let her go. Reaching a saturation point and scared to death, she finally approached DN Nagar police and filed an FIR against him.
The police booked him under IPC sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354D (stalking), 419 (punishment for cheating by personation) and 506 (criminal intimidation), and 66D of the Information Technology Act.
Abhijit is now in police custody. They found a fake Facebook account created by him in 2016 which he used to send her abusive messages. He also gave her his number and asked her to call him.
It is a scary world we live in. While dating apps and matrimonial websites make it easier for singles to find one another and maybe find ‘love’ in the process, it is also dangerous due to such hackers and obsessive-unrequited lovers.