TheCable

Dinal De Alwis, a 16-year-old school student, has committed suicide after he was blackmailed over nude photographs, an inquest has heard.

The Telegraph reports that the South London coroner’s court heard that the teenager recorded a video saying he planned to kill himself after receiving two nude photographs of himself from a blackmailer on Snapchat, a social media platform popular among young people.

The blackmailer demanded that Dinal pay £100 to stop sending the images to his followers.

“He messaged my wife and I to say he loved us, and he told his two brothers that he loves them, and said they need to ‘look after mum and dad’,” Kaushallya De Alwis, Dinal’s father said, narrating the night his son disappeared.

De Alwis told the inquest his son had not shown any signs of unhappiness but believed he wanted to avoid the shame of the photographs going public.

The court was also told that Dinal was a pupil at Whitgift School in Croydon who had earned a clean sheet of straight As in his general certificate of secondary education (GCSEs) and had hopes of studying economics at Cambridge University.

After success in his GCSEs, Dinal began studying for the international baccalaureate in sixth form and was top of the school in English and economics.

The court also heard that the blackmailer – who is thought to have had other victims – wrote: “So you think blocking me can stop me? What do you want me to do – you want me to send to all of your followers? Why can’t you just pay me? £100?”

Dinal responded that he had assumed the pictures had already been distributed.

His father said he slipped out of the house and recorded a brief video of himself walking down a suburban street.

An hour later, his body was found after he had fallen to his death, which was caught on CCTV.

“We come from Sri Lanka, so we were so proud to hear he was so good at English. He was brave. He played for the football and rugby teams at Whitgift School. He never asked for anything from us. He was always happy with what he had,” De Alwis said.

“His loss is the biggest possible loss. It is so incredibly painful. The fact that he ended his life in this way… the world is so cruel.”

Police and the UK’s national crime agency told Dinal’s family they were unable to trace the blackmailer but said it appeared they were operating from Nigeria.