Hyderabad: Cyber hate kept cops busy all of last year, with netizens in Hyderabad and Cyberabad seeing a three-fold increase in online stalking, abusive emails, SMSs, phone calls and Facebook-related crime.

A substantial number of victims were women. Vindictive men used the Internet to defame their ex-girlfriends, and vengeful employees took on their bosses using social networking sites.

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma was also booked by the police multiple times for his “hate comments”. Police records show that more than 300 cybercrime cases were reported in 2014. Of these, 118 involved men creating fake profiles of women and posting offensive contents on the internet.

“Ex-boyfriends find networking sites a good platform to vent their wrath on girls. They think they can pull it off without getting caught. But once we get a complaint, he cannot get away,” said a cyber crime cop from CCS.

Two weeks ago, a former employee of a real estate company sent his ex-boss morphed pictures of the boss’ wife and abusive mails to other employees of the company. Senapathi Sridhar, 49, from Vanasthalipuram, had been sacked for not being punctual. Police tracked him down.

Apart from the registered cases in cyber crime police stations, there hundreds of cases in which police conducted investigation off the record since the women did not want to lodge an official complaint.

“Many women, do not want to officially lodge a complaint fearing a messy case. Instead, they want us to track down the accused and warn him so that they can avoid going to court,” said an official.