DIGITAL BLACKMAIL ONE FACEBOOK PHOTO IS ALL IT TOOK

 DIGITAL BLACKMAIL  ONE FACEBOOK PHOTO IS ALL IT TOOK

Sneha Bhura writes in Times of India of 2nd February 2026

The first phone call came on a weekday last year, just as Ramesh Verma (name changed), 41, was finishing dinner with his wife Anjali in their Ghaziabad apartment. The man on the line said casually,"I have bad photos of you and your wife," Verma recalls.

"I thought it was a scam call and cut it." But the calls kept coming.

Then the caller sent proof. On WhatsApp, Ramesh received an image of himself and his wife that they immediately recognised. It was a photograph from facebook., taken years ago at a cousin's wedding. Except, now, both of them appeared naked. "It was us - same posture, same expressions - just undressed," he says with a shudder. 

The caller threatened to upload the image on social media, porn sites and circulate it on WhatsApp groups if they didn't transfer Rs.5 lakh. A helpline for online scams informed Verma that it was most likely an AI tool used on the image and advised them to report it to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal. 

Following the complaint, the calls stopped.

"What stayed with us was how easily it happened. One Facebook photo is all it took," says Verma.

 Anjali deactivated her social media accounts soon after.

"But the fear doesn't go away."

RETIRED HUSBAND SYNDROME OF JAPAN

 

RETIRED HUSBAND SYNDROME OF JAPAN

Abhijit Bannerjee, Nobel winning economist writes in the Times of India of 2^nd February 2026

Women in Japan, faced with the impending retirement of their husbands, start to feel worried and depressed. It can even turn into high blood pressure, ulcers and rashes. The problem comes from the specific lifestyles of the Japanese ‘Salarymen’ in a generation when relatively few women worked outside the home. Workdays and commutes were long, and men mostly socialized with their colleagues and male friends..As a result, the couple never really needed to spend a lot of time together.

But once retired, it is hard to avoid his presence in the narrow confines of the typical Japanese apartment.

She wants to behave well, to be welcoming and friendly. But after 35 years of limited intimacy, it is starting life all over again with an almost stranger, a confrontation of her or his idiosyncrasies (easily concealed so far) with each other.