By Sharanya Gopinathan

When I was younger, my mother told me a story about three friends from Kozhikode. Two of the girls went to the third friend’s house, where they ended up drinking something that the hostess friend offered them. Turns out, my mother informed me darkly, that she had mixed drugs in their drinks, and when they passed out, she took pictures of them naked and sold them to be shared on the Internet. My mum told me this cautionary (and after some thorough Googling this morning, I suspect fictional) tale as a warning against, um, spending too much time with friends and going to their houses, I think.

I was reminded of this possible fake-news story (seriously, I can’t find a whisper of this incident anywhere) when I read another awful report from Kerala this morning, because clearly there is no getting it right. You don’t have to make bad friends and spend too much time in their houses to run the risk of having your pictures morphed and splashed all over the Internet. Apparently, just getting married can give you the same results.

A wedding photography studio in Vadakara is currently being investigated by Kozhikode police after several different women have come forward with complaints that their wedding pictures have been morphed obscenely and circulated online.

A. Bibeesh (of course) who works at Sadayam Shoot and Edit is at the centre of the controversy and seems to be the one responsible for morphing and circulating the images. The police received complaints from two women, and upon further investigation, found that many more women had been subjected to the same crime.

They found 40,000 pictures of women, originally photographed at weddings and other functions, in a hard disk owned by Bibeesh. Police will inspect the hard disk and continue their investigations, to decipher how many women have been subjected to this, and also to figure out if there are more pictures of hapless women stored elsewhere.