Kollam: For the past several months, a family in Kottarakkara area of this southern Kerala district has been facing burning electrical wires, malfunctioning appliances, abusive and pre-warning WhatsApp messages and it was only after the police intervened that the culprit was nabbed. went. A family member was found — a 14-year-old boy. Obvious questions come to mind that why did he do all this and from where did he get the knowledge for this.
Police say that at first the boy himself could not give a satisfactory answer and when asked, he only said that he felt so. Regarding the second, the police said that the boy got all the information and knowledge to harass his family from a popular social media platform-YouTube, which also brings to the fore the need to monitor mobile and internet usage of the youth.
Police said that according to the boy’s aunt, who had recently returned from a Gulf country, she used to get messages on WhatsApp from her mother’s number that the TV was going to explode or the wiring was going to burn and then the same thing would happen.
However, some of these were exaggerated, a senior police officer told PTI.
He said that the electric wires got burnt or the TV got damaged long before he returned to India and he had not received any message in this regard.
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He used to get messages that now the fan of his room would stop or the lights would go off or the water in the overhead tank would drop soon which the boy was sending and then he would switch off and perform these antics. The same from the main power box, the official said.
The teenager also sent messages containing vulgar and inappropriate language and when she asked who was sending them, he would give the name of her husband with whom she had a strained relationship.
The boy also kept a bluetooth dongle of the aunt’s husband in the house to implicate him for what was happening.
The relatives complained to the police and the cyber cell investigated the matter and it was found that whenever messages were sent from the boy’s grandmother’s phone, the mobile was with her.
“The search history of the phone revealed that the teenager was looking for information and videos about hacking the phone, damaging devices, unlocking the phone, derogatory and inappropriate content and much more,” the officer said.
He further said that the conduct of the teenager was not that of a child of her age but much older and this was due to the adverse effect of uncontrolled use of mobile phone and internet.