Tamil Nadu Youtuber Madan Kumar Manickam was arrested by the police on Friday for allegedly using obscene language in his YouTube channel that had over 8 lakh subscribers.
According to the police, Madan has been booked for allegedly using obscene language while talking to underage boys and girls through his channel and uploading abusive content. He had also extorted money from them, police said.
He was absconding when asked to appear before the police on June 14 and was arrested from Salem in Tamil Nadu on Friday. Manickam has been booked under various sections of the Information Technology Act, Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, and the Indian Penal Code.
Madan had allegedly created his YouTube channel "Toxic Madan 18+" in 2019 to talk about online games, including the banned PUBG, police said and claimed that he used abusive language to make the channel popular.
The police said that several minors had subscribed to the channel and watched the videos containing obscene content. The police have received more than 100 complaints against Madan and his channel.
Advocate Manish Bhadauria said the case would attract sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act too if obscene sexual content was sent to minors.
"Nowadays cyber crimes have increased in the country. Learned people are getting duped too. More awareness needs to be created among the public. Special experts at the cyber cell can be appointed with the task of spreading awareness," Bhadauria said.
He further said one such trend is that people create fake profiles and lure women and men to indulge in nude video chat. "They then record it and extort money through blackmail," he added.
Madan's wife has also been arrested on June 16 the case. She was allegedly the admin of the YouTube channel. The cybercrime police have written to YouTube to disable the channel.
Anticipatory bail rejected
On June 17, the Madras High Court had rejected Manickam's anticipatory bail plea and observed that Madan's videos were allegedly vulgar and had foul language.
According to National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, India saw an increase of 63.5 percent in cases related to cyber crimes in 2019. In 2019, 44, 546 cases were registered as compared to 28, 248 in 2018, NCRB data stated.
The data showed that the motive behind the majority (60.4 percent) of the cases was fraud, followed by sexual exploitation (5.1 percent) and then causing disrepute (4.2 percent).
