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: Sexting or video calls on stranger apps is not automatically a crime if everyone involved is an adult and consenting. What is a crime is recording without consent, sharing the clip, threatening to share it, or demanding money. If any person involved is under 18, the POCSO Act applies and consent stops mattering entirely.
Arjun Mehta is 29 and works night shifts for a Pune-based IT services company. Late one evening in March 2025, bored at 1 a.m., he opened a stranger video chat app and got talking to a woman who called herself "Sneha". The chat turned sexual. Both were on camera, both appeared to go along with it, and nobody said stop.
That's where the story usually stops in the telling. What I can say about what came after is limited, and deliberately so. I will not set out the messages that followed, because the sequence matters and I'm not going to hand a reader a script to compare their own situation against. What matters is which of these things happened next: whether anything was captured, whether it was sent anywhere, whether anyone asked for money, and whether the person on the other end was who they said they were. Arjun came to the chamber with his laptop and a phone that had been buzzing on and off for eleven days. He had not filed anything yet.
We only have one side of this. Any lawyer reading a first account like that is working with a partial picture, and the other side's version — if there is an other side to hear — may be different.
Key facts at a glance
- Two adults, both on camera, both participating willingly, on a stranger video chat app.
- Nothing was said to indicate anyone wanted it to stop.
- No money changed hands during the call itself.
- What is unknown, and what drives the whole legal position, is whether the call was recorded and where any recording went.
- The other person's real identity is unverified. That is a fact in almost every case of this kind.
Is sexting on a video call a crime in India?
Short answer: the call itself, between consenting adults, is not an offence under Indian law. There is no section in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, or the Information Technology Act, 2000, that criminalises an adult privately engaging in sexual conversation or sexual activity with another adult who has agreed to it.
The offences sit around the edges of that act, not in it. Four things turn a lawful private act into a criminal one: capturing it without consent, publishing or transmitting it, threatening the other person, and any financial demand attached to that threat.
Where no offence is made out
If both participants are adults, both consented to what happened on camera, no recording was made by either of them, and nothing was shared afterwards, there is no case to answer. That is not a technicality. Consent is the dividing line, and it has to be present at the time, for each act.
Where a recording is made and circulated
Recording a private act without consent, and then publishing or transmitting that recording, is where most of these matters end up. The provisions that come into play include:
- Section 66E of the IT Act — capturing, publishing or transmitting the image of a private area of any person without consent, in circumstances where that person expected privacy.
- Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act — publishing or transmitting obscene material, and material containing a sexually explicit act, in electronic form.
- Section 77 of the BNS — voyeurism. As drafted, this section speaks of a woman engaging in a private act, so it does not travel neatly to every fact pattern.
- Section 79 of the BNS — words, gestures or acts intended to insult the modesty of a woman. This, too, is framed around a woman as the person insulted.
That gender framing matters and it is worth saying plainly. Where the person recorded and blackmailed is a man, some of the BNS provisions do not fit by their own wording, and the case rests largely on the IT Act and on the extortion and intimidation provisions.
Where a demand for money follows
This is what people call sextortion, and it is charged as ordinary crime. Section 308 of the BNS covers extortion — intentionally putting a person in fear of injury in order to commit dishonestly induced delivery of property. Section 351 of the BNS covers criminal intimidation. Where a fake profile was used to get into the conversation at all, Section 318 of the BNS on cheating may also be in play. Merely asking for money without a threat is not extortion. The threat is the ingredient.
When the other person is under 18
This changes everything, and it changes it irreversibly. Under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, consent has no legal value where the child is below eighteen. A person who was told, or who claims to have been told, that the other participant is an adult does not get out of it on that basis alone. If the call involved a child, the matter moves to the special courts under POCSO, and the IT Act provisions on child sexual abuse material — including Section 67B — can be added. Sentences here are heavier and bail is not routine.
What to do if this is happening to you right now
The order of the next few steps affects the case more than anything a lawyer does later.
- Do not pay. A payment confirms the person has a working lever and it does not buy silence. It usually increases the demand.
- Do not delete the messages. Not one. Screenshots, chat backups, the call log, the app's profile page, the number or username. Evidence that is wiped because it was embarrassing is evidence that no longer exists.
- Do not keep talking. You do not have to negotiate. Keep the record, stop the conversation.
- Report. A complaint can be filed on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal and, for money already paid, on the 1930 helpline. For the underlying offence, a written complaint at your local police station, and an FIR under Section 173 of the BNSS, is the ordinary route.
- If you have already paid, the payment trail is itself useful to investigators and the bank can be asked to freeze the receiving account. Speed matters here more than completeness.
Jurisdiction is rarely a problem in these matters. A zero FIR can be registered at any police station and forwarded to the one with jurisdiction, and cyber offences are routinely investigated by the cyber cell of the district where the complainant lives.
If the police have already called you
Different situation, different first move. If you are the person being investigated — because a recording went out from your device, or because a complaint has been filed against you — then the call from the police is not an invitation to explain yourself informally. It is the start of a case.
A notice under Section 35 of the BNSS requiring your appearance must be responded to and must not be ignored. Appearing is not an admission. It is also not a conversation to have without a lawyer, and it is not the moment for an apology, an explanation or a story about what you thought the other person wanted. Where a person has reasonable grounds to believe they will be arrested, anticipatory bail can be sought under Section 482 of the BNSS.
Why these cases are hard to call in advance
Two people in the same argument, with the same complaint, can end up in opposite positions, and the reasons are usually these.
First, the account is one-sided at the start. Almost always. The other participant is unidentified, or a profile that has since been deleted. Police investigation into the identity behind a stranger-app account takes time and often does not produce a name.
Second, electronic evidence has its own rules. Under Section 63 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, electronic records come with conditions — a certificate, a chain of custody, and proof that the copy is genuine. A screenshot is a start. It is not a case.
Third, and this is the part I can't resolve honestly for any reader: whether a participant in a two-person private call who records that call without consent commits an offence under Section 66E is not settled cleanly. The section is about capturing an image of a private area without consent. Where the person captured is also the person capturing, courts have taken differing views. On facts like these there may be nothing to argue, and on slightly different facts there may be a great deal. That is the truth of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is sexting on a video call with a stranger legal in India?
Between consenting adults, the act itself is not an offence. What is criminal is recording without consent, circulating what was recorded, threatening someone with it, or demanding money on the strength of that threat.
Can I be arrested for a consensual video call that I did not record or share?
A bare complaint can still be filed against anyone, and that is a real risk people underestimate. But a case with no recording, no publication and no demand has very little to stand on, and the practical question becomes how quickly it is closed or quashed rather than whether it is filed.
What if the other person said they were 20 but was actually 17?
Their statement does not bind the law. Once age is established as below eighteen, POCSO applies, and the fact that you were misled goes to sentencing and to the defence rather than to whether an offence exists at all. This is the single most serious turn these matters can take, and it should be handled by a lawyer immediately.
I already paid the money. Have I made it worse?
You have given investigators a trail, which helps. You have also told the person that paying works. Stop the payments, keep the receipts, and report the transactions.
Will the police come to my house, or will I get a notice first?
For offences of this type, the usual first step is a notice to appear, or a phone call asking you to come to the station. In urgent cases, and where the offence alleged is serious, police may act differently. Do not decide alone.
Can this affect my marriage or my job?
An FIR is a public document at some stage, and it can be used in matrimonial proceedings regardless of how the criminal case ends. That is a separate track from the criminal one and needs its own advice.
Before you write to us
If you want a view on your own facts, send three things: a short two-line note on what happened and when, any notice or complaint you have received with its date, and the messages or screenshots you have kept. Do not send anything through a public forum, and do not send the material to anyone who has asked you for money.
You can write to us through /contact-us or book a time at /book. Send the notice date first. Everything else can follow.
This is general information on Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Every case turns on its own facts, and some of the ones described here are still being argued in court.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India
Facing a similar matter? Speak to a Delhi criminal defence lawyer — 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.