One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.
Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.
TL;DR: Your friend in India can absolutely file a cybercrime complaint here even if the man behind the accounts is sitting in the UK. Making fake profiles with someone's photographs, posting filth about them and sending threats are three separate offences, punishable under the BNS and the IT Act. Preserve everything first, file on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, then follow it up at your local cyber cell with a written complaint.
Key Facts of the Case
- Two women, one in Pune and one in Birmingham, UK, had their photographs lifted and used to create fake Instagram profiles.
- Neither woman created those profiles, and neither had shared passwords or account access with anyone.
- The profiles carried derogatory captions and, in the Pune woman's case, direct threats.
- The suspected creator is a man based in the UK, and the complainants held screenshots of him admitting he had made the accounts.
- The Pune woman had done nothing more than tell the other woman what she knew. No hacking, no blackmail, no impersonation, no public posting of private chats.
- Profile URLs, handles, captions and threat messages were preserved before any complaint was filed.
- A complaint was filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, with a parallel written complaint at the local cyber cell police station.
- The offence is committed where the victim resides and accesses the material, which is why an Indian police station can register it.
The Direct Legal Answer
Can my friend in India file a cybercrime complaint when the suspect is in the UK?
Yes. Indian law does not require the accused to be physically in India for a complaint to be registered here. Section 75 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 extends the Act to offences committed outside India where the computer resource involved is located in India. The victim's location, where she reads the posts and receives the threats, is treated as a place where the offence has consequences, and a First Information Report can be registered there. Enforcement across borders is slower and depends on mutual legal assistance, but registration is not blocked by it.
Should the friend in the UK also report it to UK police?
She should. The two complaints are not alternatives. A UK report under their harassment and malicious communications laws gives the Indian investigation a foreign counterpart, and cross-border requests move far faster when a local force in the other country is already seized of the matter.
Do fake accounts, derogatory posts and threats amount to criminal offences?
They do, and they are treated as distinct offences: stalking, insult to modesty, criminal intimidation, defamation, cheating by personation, and identity theft under the IT Act. Each carries its own punishment, and courts look at each separately.
What evidence should be preserved before reporting?
Everything, and before you report anything. Profile URLs, handles, screenshots with visible timestamps, the threat messages, and any admission by the suspect. Screenshots alone are weak if the account later disappears, so the links and the dates matter as much as the pictures.
Advice in Such Cases
Consult with Lawyer: The very basic and important step to start is talk to Lawyer / advocate. You should not hesitate in paying his consultation fee i.e. might be in range of a few thousand rupees for a first sitting, though every chamber quotes its own figure and you will not know it until you ask. Do not let the amount decide whether you go at all. What makes that first meeting useful is a plain two-page note — what happened, in what order, who said what, and the links — not a fifty-page printout of screenshots stapled together.
Do not wait to "collect more proof": People sit on these complaints for months hoping for one more screenshot. In that time the profile gets deleted, the account is renamed, and the IP log that would have identified the man crosses the retention window. File with what you have. You can always add material later by way of a supplementary complaint.
How to File a Cybercrime Complaint When the Accused Is in the UK
Sequence matters more than paperwork here. Done in the wrong order, you destroy your own case.
Step 1 — Preserve, properly
- Full-page screenshots, not cropped ones. The handle, the profile ID and the timestamp need to be visible in the same frame.
- Copy the profile URL and the numeric account ID, if you can see it.
- Save the threat messages and the admission in their original form, not as forwarded screenshots.
- Keep the device you used. Do not factory reset the phone, do not clear the app cache, do not delete the chat.
Step 2 — Stop contacting him
Messaging the suspect to confront him is the single most common mistake in these matters. It tells him the account is about to be reported. Accounts disappear within hours of that.
Step 3 — File on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
Go to nationalcybercrime.gov.in and file under the category that fits — impersonation and social media abuse fall under "Other Cyber Crime", while content involving women is filed under the women and children category. Keep the acknowledgement number. Save the PDF of the acknowledgement. For anything involving money the helpline is 1930, but that is not your situation.
Step 4 — A written complaint at the local cyber cell
The portal complaint frequently sits in a queue. A signed written complaint at the cyber cell of the district where the woman lives is what moves it. Ask for a receipt with a stamp, or at minimum the GD entry number. If the cyber cell is in another city, any police station can register a Zero FIR and transfer it.
Step 5 — Ask for a production notice to the platform
Screenshots identify nobody. What identifies him is subscriber information, registration IP, login IPs and device data, which the platform holds and will only release to a police requisition. The investigating officer sends a written notice to the platform's India office for these records. If the request is not made in the first few weeks, the logs are usually gone. This is the part a lawyer can push. It is also the part most complainants never ask about, because nobody tells them.
Step 6 — Takedown, but after the police have the material
You can report the fake profile to the platform directly and it will often come down. Do that after the police have taken your complaint on record, and tell the platform that a criminal complaint is pending. Removing the profile before that is tidy and self-defeating.
What the Indian Case Can and Cannot Do
Be clear-eyed about this before you spend money.
- What it can do: register the FIR, summons the platform's records, identify the account holder through subscriber and IP data, and support a UK police action with an Indian complaint on file.
- What it usually cannot do: arrest a man sitting in the UK, extradite him for these offences, or recover money from him.
International cooperation runs through mutual legal assistance — a formal request routed through the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of External Affairs to the UK central authority, and where needed a letter of request from a court here. It works. It is slow, often measured in many months, and it depends on the Indian police actually sending the request. Do not expect a request to be sent on the strength of a portal acknowledgement alone.
Realistically, the UK police are the only force that can actually reach him in his own country. That is why the parallel UK complaint is not a courtesy — it is the enforcement arm of your case.
Passing On What You Know Is Not the Offence
There is a real anxiety in these situations that the person who merely forwarded the information will be dragged in. On the facts here, the woman only told the other woman what she had found. Creating the profile, uploading the photographs, writing the captions and sending the threats are the acts that attract liability. Telling someone about them is not one of them, and neither is reading a page that someone else posted.
Where that changes is republishing. Forwarding the offending post or the photographs to a group, or reposting them to "expose" him, is a fresh publication and can create liability for the person doing the forwarding — apart from spreading the harm the original complaint is meant to stop. Keep it to the police, the platform and your lawyer.
One more caution. Naming the wrong person, or naming someone on suspicion rather than evidence, carries its own risk of a complaint of a false charge. The account data, not intuition, should decide who is named.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I file a cybercrime complaint in India if the accused is abroad?
Yes. Section 75 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 covers offences committed outside India where the computer resource involved is in India, and the place where the victim reads the material or receives the threats is treated as a place where the offence has consequences. Whether the investigation actually crosses the border is a separate, slower question.
Will the police actually register an FIR against a foreign national?
They register the FIR. The honest answer is that investigation against a person outside India depends on letters of request that many police stations have never drafted. A lawyer who has handled cyber matters can prepare the complaint so that the request stage is anticipated from day one.
What offences do fake profiles and threats attract?
Creating a profile in another person's name is cheating by personation and identity theft. Obscene posts attract the obscenity provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Threats attract criminal intimidation under Section 351 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and unwanted following or monitoring attracts stalking under Section 78. Insult to the modesty of a woman is Section 79, and defamation is Section 356. Identity theft is Section 66C and cheating by personation using a computer resource is Section 66D of the IT Act. Each is a separate offence with its own punishment, and each needs to be pleaded separately in the complaint.
How long does it take?
Registration on the portal takes an hour. Getting the complaint converted into an FIR and the platform notice issued usually takes weeks, and it takes longer if you do not follow up in person. Investigation and a charge sheet run into months, and longer if records have to come from abroad. There is a statutory outer limit for completing investigation in certain offences against women, but it is not something a complainant can rely on to speed up an impersonation case.
What if the police station refuses to take my complaint?
State the refusal in writing to the Superintendent of Police under Section 173(4) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. If that produces nothing, an application lies before the Magistrate under Section 175(3) of the same Act, asking for a direction to investigate. Keep the postal receipt and the acknowledgement of every letter.
Do I need to be in India to file?
Not necessarily, if the complaint is filed in the name of the woman in India and she signs it. A person abroad can also send a complaint, but the practical path is that the Indian victim is the complainant and the woman abroad is a witness and co-complainant.
Should the profile be taken down immediately?
No. Preserve first, get the complaint on record
and let the police send the platform notice. Once the investigating officer has written to the platform for subscriber details, registration IPs and login logs, the profile can come down without costing you anything. If you want it gone sooner, file the takedown request yourself but say in it that a criminal complaint is pending, so the platform preserves its records instead of wiping them.
Do I need a lawyer to file a cybercrime complaint?
No. You can file on the portal and at the cyber cell yourself, and you should, because the delay is what hurts you. A lawyer becomes useful at the point where the complaint stalls — the FIR is not registered, the platform notice is not being sent, or the foreign request has to be drafted and pursued. That is a narrower job than most people assume, and it is worth doing only when there is something to push.
What to Send, and Where
If the profile is still live and the threats are recent, do not sit on it. Write to us with what you already have, in this order:
- The profile URLs, the handles, and the date you first saw each one.
- Uncropped screenshots with visible timestamps, saved as separate files and not pasted into a document.
- The portal acknowledgement number and its date, if you have already filed.
- A copy of the written complaint, the police receipt or GD entry, and any reply you have received.
- Two lines at the top saying what happened, when it started, and who is behind it — not a narrative, just the sequence.
Send it to me@sudhirrao.com or call +91 97295 06771. You can also use the form at /contact-us or book a sitting at /book. Bring or attach the one thing that decides these matters — the link to the account and the date you saw it. Everything else can be sorted in the meeting.
One last thing worth saying plainly. On facts like these, the Indian complaint will very likely produce an FIR and platform records, and will very likely not produce an arrest in the UK. If what you want is the man punished in his own country, the UK complaint is the case that matters, and the Indian file is its evidence. If what you want is the profile down and the threats stopped, the Indian file plus a platform takedown usually gets you there. Tell us which of the two you are actually after, because the paperwork is drafted differently for each.
This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Please have your documents read before acting on anything here.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India
Facing a similar matter? Speak to a criminal advocate in Delhi — Advocate Sudhir Rao appears in bail, trial and appellate matters before the Delhi District Courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India.