Telangana techie taken into custody for rape threat to cricketer’s baby: Police

Senior Mumbai police officers said the suspect is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad and was preparing to get admission into a post-graduate course.

MUMBAI: A 23-year-old software engineer in Telangana has been detained on suspicion that he posted a disgusting online rape threat targetting an Indian cricketer’s baby daughter after the infant’s father stood up to Twitter trolls for his teammate.

The rape threat aimed at the Indian cricketer’s daughter, a 10-month-old , provoked outrage on and off social media. A fact-checker portal debunked claimed the threat was posted by a Twitter handle based in Pakistan. (Shutterstock)

A senior Mumbai police officer said the suspect, Akubathini Ramnagesh, is an engineering graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad and was preparing for admission to do his post-graduation. He earlier worked as a software engineer in a food delivery app in Hyderabad

A statement issued by Mumbai police said the accused has been taken into custody in Telangana’s Sangareddy district, 60km from state capital Hyderabad, and is being brought to Mumbai.

The cricketer came out in the defence of Indian pacer Mohammed Sami and condemned those who attacked him over his faith. Shami was trolled and abused by many people on Twitter after India lost to Pakistan in T20 World Cup.

Twitter handle ‘Amena @criccrazygirl’ (now-deleted) posted a tweet where the user threatened to rape the cricketer’s daughter. It was initially claimed that @criccrazygirl was a Pakistani bot account but later a fact-check portal Alt News later found that the tweet was not posted by any Pakistani user, but an Indian.

On November 8, the West Region, Cyber police station of Mumbai police registered a First Information Report (FIR) on a complaint by the cricketer’s manager. The case was registered under sections 354A (sexual harassment), 506 (criminal intimidation), 500 (criminal defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) and 67B (publishing material depicting children in sexually explicit act) of the Information Technology Act.

The Internet Protocol address of the computer system used to post the threat was identified during a technical investigation, a police officer said. Once this was done, a police team travelled to Hyderabad to nab the suspect.