25-year-old arrested for flooding people with dirty text messages and demanding money to stop the harassment is mentally ill, say parents

25-year-old arrested for flooding people with dirty text messages

A 25-year-old man who the police said got a strange pleasure from sending nasty, threatening, and at times obscene text messages to people is now cooling his heels in the lock-up.

The Anti-Extortion Cell arrested Javed Bashir Daffedar, a resident of 54, E P Lohiyanagar, for demanding money from a city doctor, Shriram Dattatray Athavle, when he was asked to stop sending unwanted messages.

Fixed pattern
Interrogation revealed that Daffedar had done the same to 15 people, including two women from affluent backgrounds.

The police said Daffedar used the same method with every person. He would first bombard a person with nastily worded or obscene messages, and if the person contacted him and asked him to stop the messages he would demand money to stop troubling him.

'He's innocent'
Daffedar's parents claim he is innocent because he is mentally disturbed and does not realise what he is doing.
Daffedar's father Bashir, who works as a telecom technical assistant with BSNL, said, "Javed is mentally ill and was on and off under treatment from several doctors, including Dr Athavle."

Athavle was unable to confirm if Daffedar had been his patient as he was busy with an emergency case and said he would talk some other day.

Police Inspector Kishor Jadhav said, "Interrogation revealed that Javed targeted people he knew or those under whom he has worked. It is also learnt that Daffedar had earlier sent similar SMSes and demanded money from the owner of a shoe shop where he used to work. As the shopkeeper threatened to lodge a police complaint, he lowered his ransom amount."

Four complaints
DCP (Crime) Anil Kumbhareu00a0 said, "Only four (people) have come forward and lodged a complaint. I appeal to others that if they have received demands for ransom, they should come forward to register a complaint."