India, April 28 -- A livestream in Los Angeles earlier this month turned into a nightmare for US-based entrepreneur Akash Singhania, who was falsely labelled a "paedophile" during a viral sting operation by YouTuber Vitaly Zdorovetskiy. It later emerged to be a case of mistaken identity. Though Vitaly apologised, the damage had already been done. As Singhania contemplates to take legal action, he recounts the ordeal. I was speaking to a girl on a dating app, and we agreed to meet consensually. You have to verify your age on these platforms, so I had no reason to suspect anything. Her role was to move conversations to Snapchat, claim she was a minor, and then set up a meeting (as part of the sting operation). That didn't happen with me, we were only chatting on the app. She was texting so many guys at the same time, incentivised to get someone as fast as possible for the show. It was a complete mistake on Vitaly's side. Within 20 seconds of meeting her, four or five cameras were in my face (revealing it was a staged setup). People around me were saying the most vile and racist things. In my head, I was beginning to think, 'Is this a prank?' because I knew I did nothing wrong. She then claimed there was another Snapchat account messaging her (to suggest I had contacted her as a minor), which wasn't me, but quickly hid her phone. I called the police myself. I had nothing to hide, and they checked everything. I was cleared. By the time I was let go, it was too late. Vitaly's team had put out clips of the incident on hundreds of channels. Millions of people had already figured it out. My cousins in India had found out within two hours. It also sparked intense racism online. People threatened to beat me, kill me, and tried to put me in jail. They culled out my business, social media profiles, my LinkedIn profile, and told everyone to cancel me. It has been a nightmare. Because I called the police immediately, my family was confident I had not done anything wrong. Luckily, the first info my parents got was from the cops, who told my father, 'Your son is innocent, sorry this happened to you guys.' That helped a lot. A lot of my friends kicked me out of group chats, blocked me. Two days later, when Vitaly apologised, some of them texted me back saying, 'Sorry, we thought this stuff was true.' They could have asked me, I would have liked that. The incident sheds light on vigilante journalism, which at times may lead to people passing judgement without proper investigation. Your thoughts? With a platform this large, due process is essential. You need to verify before accusing someone. It's important that you get the right person. I have seen people do the work correctly, and putting away people in conjunction with the cops. But someone like Vitaly only cares about views. the very next day after my incident, he spent a livestream going around with a caught predator, where he asked his audience in a poll whether he should let him go, to which people mostly said yes. Towards the end of the night, Vitaly and his team somehow let him run away. If they really cared about all this, that guy would be in jail. How has the response been since you were cleared? The support has been amazing, from parents, grandparents, people my age, and friends. A lot of people have been saying they want to donate, but I am not accepting any. I am lucky to have my family support me, my community cooperated, and so did the police department. Not many are this lucky....