A “gifted” student from a top private school took his own life after being blackmailed over nude photographs, an inquest heard.
Dinal De Alwis, 16, got straight A*s at GCSE and was top of Whitgift School, a private boys school in Croydon, south London ranked 45th in The Sunday Times national rankings, in two subjects.
A coroner concluded that Dinal died by suicide in October 2022, hours after receiving messages from a man threatening to send two nude images to “all of his followers” if he did not send him money.
A Metropolitan Police investigation found that Dinal received iMessages from the man which said: “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: “I’m trying to find a building high enough for me to jump off.”
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The man used VPNs to hide his location but detectives believe he was probably based in Nigeria, the court heard. As the suspect was outside their jurisdiction, detectives thought prosecution was unlikely.
Described by his father, Kaushallya, as “our golden boy”, Dinal attended Whitgift School, where annual day fees are £24,000 and alumni include Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, the illusionist Derren Brown and the author Neil Gaiman. He had recently attended an open day at the University of Cambridge where he hoped to study economics.
De Alwis told the inquest that Dinal was “the most caring son”. He said: “He was bright. He got straight A*s in all of his subjects at GCSEs and was top of the school for English and Economics. 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. 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.”
De Alwis believes his son “wanted to avoid any shame from the images going public”.
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“I wish he had spoken to us,” he said. “He had always been so open in the past. But I think when things are happening online, live, it feels like there is no time. He did nothing wrong.”
The inquest at South London coroner’s court found Dinal jumped from a multistorey building with scaffolding in Sutton, south London, in the early hours of October 27, 2022.
Assistant coroner Sian Reeves found that Dinal intended to take his own life after viewing “goodbye” messages sent to the teenager’s parents and two brothers, as well as CCTV footage and Google searches before his death.
She said: “The world has lost a bright star — a boy gifted both academically and in sports.”
Figures obtained from 28 of England and Wales’ 43 police forces through Freedom of Information requests revealed that there were 3,382 incidents of under-18s being blackmailed over naked photos in the year to June 2023, up 390 per cent from 2020-21.
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The figures, obtained by the Daily Mirror, showed the biggest rise was in Manchester, where the incidents reported by under-18s jumped from 20 to 560, a spike of 2,700 per cent.
The Internet Watch Foundation said reports to its hotline of confirmed child abuse involving blackmail using explicit images were up 257 per cent in the first six months of 2023 when compared with the whole of 2022.
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