On Monday, a 25-year-old man was arrested by police on making sexual harassment claims in the lieu of #MeToo campaign, especially when it was on its peak. The accused identified as Utkarsh Mehta revealed he made fake accounts.
The youth pretended to be a woman and made allegations on the CEO Sudarshan Banerjee of an advertising company Utopia Communications on the pretext of harassment on social media.
As per the police, around 4-6 posts were published on social media accusing the CEO of being a sex pest. An anonymous social media account was made by the accused of making these claims. Following this, the CEO approached the court and received an order to file FIR to find the person behind the posts.
The police officer said, “We registered an FIR on March 16 and traced the accused with digital evidence against him.”
After the accused was arrested by the police, he told that his woman friend who had worked in the CEO’s company told him about the alleged sexual harassment she faced by the CEO.
The police are investigating the matter and are probing whether his female friend knew about the posts or not.
The man has been booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code for conspiracy (section 120B), forgery (section 465), forgery for purpose of harming reputation (section 469), using an electronic document for forgery (section 471) and defamation (section 500) along with relevant sections of the Information Technology (IT) Act.
The #Metoo movement went viral in October 2017 in social media in an attempt to bring out sexual assaults and harassment faced by women, especially in the workplace.
