Mangalore, Mar 31 (TOI): A 25-year-old Kolkata based techie who hacked into his girlfriend's email account, used it to send her morphed obscene pictures to friends on her mailing list, and also uploaded the same on to pornography website, is now cooling his heels in the district jail here.

The techie Debraj Sengupta has earned the dubious distinction of being the first person in Dakshina Kannada district to be arrested under the IT Act.

A team of police officials headed by Panambur Circle Police Inspector Valentine D'Souza nabbed Debraj, working for a BPO of a reputed IT company from his residence at Heerapur in Bardwan district in West Bengal, some 300 km from Kolkata on Sunday. Police seized his PC, and other computer peripherals in this connection. Debraj, produced before the IIIrd JMFC court here has been remanded in to judicial custody for 14 days.

Ananthapadmanabha, PSI attached to Kavoor police station, who was on D'Souzas team that nabbed Debraj told TOI that Debraj's girlfriend, now residing in Kavoor police station limits had lodged a complaint about her email account being hacked and obscene pictures of her being circulated over the internet. "Our investigations led us to Debraj and we were successful in nabbing him as per provision in the Act, he said.

Noting that the Act prescribes stringent punishment of five years imprisonment and a fine of Rs 2 lakh, Ananthapadmanabha said not many are aware of the same. This is perhaps the reason why no one comes forward to lodge a complaint when they are targeted," he said.