Hyderabad: A Navy officer from Mumbai has been convicted to two years of rigorous imprisonment for abusing and sending a rape threat to a 16-year-old Hyderabad girl through facebook. The case was one of the first facebook-related crimes reported in India in 2010.

The 33-year-old Dilip Kumar Sinha, a Lieutenant at the Colaba naval base in Mumbai, had sent a friend request to the girl. As soon as she accepted his friends request, he proposed to her. When she rejected, he allegedly started abusing her and threatened to rape her.

The first additional chief metropolitan magistrate found Dilip Kumar guilty under charges of 67, 67-B (c) (d) of Information Technology Act, 2000, and Section 509 of Indian Penal Code. The court also penalised him Rs 15,000. Dilip Kumar was arrested in 2010 by a CID team from Hyderabad following a complaint from the victim’s parents.

“The victim’s surname was also Sinha, because of which she accepted his friend-request thinking he must be known to her. The girl was a student at the time. It was a time facebook was still picking up. As she accepted his request, Dilip Kumar started chatting with her,” said the investigation official B. Ravi Kumar Reddy, Inspector, Cyber Crime, CID.

The case was one of the earliest detected cases in Cyber crime in India, especially a facebook-related crime. “In 2010, the CID sent requests to the facebook office in California, USA, seeking details of the user. Facebook provided the details and evidences. All the evidences including the chat history were submitted to the court,” said a senior official from CID.