Kalpetta: When his relationship with a Wayanad woman did not materialise into marriage, 27-year-old Renchan Malik from Odisha took to social media to harass her and post her nude photos in an act of revenge porn.

He thought that sitting in his native village of Lachipur, near Bursapalli, in Subarnapur district of Odisha, he would get away with the crime. But a team from the Kalpetta Cyber Police travelled over 1,400 km to nab him from an area considered a citadel of Maoist ultras.

Led by Cyber Police Station Inspector Shaju Joseph, the five-member team embarked on a week-long mission to reach the remote village in Odisha.

Colleagues to lovers
Renchan and the survivor met while working in an industrial unit in Tamil Nadu. The woman's elder sister was also working there. What began as a friendship bloomed into a relationship. They were quite intimate, police say, as the woman shared many of her intimate photos and videos with Renchan.

The two even planned to get married. The relationship continued until the elder sister returned home to Wayanad and got married.

Soon her parents asked her to return home as they did not want her to continue working in Tamil Nadu without the elder sister. They also started putting pressure on her to get married. Though initially she resisted, she relented. As her family began searching for a groom and preparing for the marriage, she broke up with Renchan.

Back in Tamil Nadu, Renchan was furious. After her marriage, he demanded that she send him her nude photographs and intimate videos with her husband, which she flatly refused. An enraged Renchan went back to his village and started posting her naked pictures on Instagram.

Shaju Joseph told Onmanorama that Renchan created a fake ID, then posted her naked photographs with a caption "₹200 per day" and her mobile number.

The ordeal
Once he started uploading photos, her life turned into hell with strangers calling her up. The incessant calls made her approach the Cyber police station, seeking the removal of the photographs from Instagram. Despite repeated efforts to take down the photographs, Renchan created fresh fake IDs, reposted the pictures, and even circulated them among her relatives.

"We warned him many times and he initially promised to stop posting her intimate photos. But he continued posting the pictures from newer fake IDs. The woman told us that she felt her life was slipping away from her. She was on the verge of taking her own life," Shaju said.

A risky mission
When the cyber police team sought permission to travel to Odisha to arrest Renchan, intelligence agencies discouraged them, citing the risks in going to a village on the Odisha-Chhattisgarh border. The area was marked a red zone, as the Maoists' stronghold.

"Finally, we got clearance from the top, as the youth was arrogantly active in cyberspace," said Shaju.

The team travelled by train as ordinary passengers. En route, they had to alight due to track maintenance and cover several kilometres by autorickshaw before boarding a bus to Lachipur, a small village surrounded by farmlands.

Thanks to the efforts of Wayanad SP Taposh Basumatari, the Odisha police provided an escort headed by a DySP with five armed policemen. The Kerala Police had already shared Renchan's details, including his location, mobile number, and photographs.

With the help of local informers, the suspect was tracked to the village. "We were directed to carry out the operation after midnight and return to the safety of the police station before dawn," Shaju said.

"At 2.30 am we moved swiftly and arrested him. Before he even realised he was in custody, we sped away to the safety of the police station before dawn," he said.

The entire Odisha police team accompanied the Kerala police to the local court for legal proceedings, and then to the railway station.

Police presented Renchan before the First-Class Judicial Magistrate, Sulthan Bathery, on Sunday evening and he was remanded to judicial custody.

Police say the evidence is against him. "We have booked him under sections 76, 77, and 78 of Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita (BNS), for sexual offences, along with provisions of the IT Act. The evidence from his mobile phone is enough to send him to jail for at least seven years," said Inspector Shaju.

The Cyber Police team included Additional Sub Inspectors K Rassack, PP Haris, and Civil Police Officers LA Linra and Arun Aravind.