Hrithik Roshan-Kangana Ranaut email fight case transferred from Mumbai cyber cell to CIU
Actor Hrithik Roshan’s 2016 first information report (FIR) against actor Kangana Ranaut, which was previously probed by the Mumbai cyber police station, has now been transferred to the crime branch’s crime intelligence unit (CIU) after Roshan’s lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani recently wrote to Mumbai Police reminding them that there has not been any progress in the case since 2016. The actor had filed a complaint after getting hundreds of emails from Ranaut’s account.
A crime branch officer confirmed the development on Monday and said that CIU will check where exactly the investigation had stopped and will continue the probe.
Roshan had filed a complaint with the cybercrime police station in 2016 against unidentified individuals under sections 419 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 66(c) and 66 (d) of the Information Technology Act.
“Our client also met top police officers when he reiterated all the facts and informed them about the trauma being caused to him and his family. He also reiterated his request for a timely investigation. However, till date, there has been no progress in the investigation, and the aforementioned case is still pending. We thus request to kindly look in the matter and issue appropriate orders to kindly direct completion of investigation at the earliest since the same is pending since 2016,” states the letter sent by the actor’s lawyer to Mumbai Police (HT has a copy).
Roshan, in a letter to the then police commissioner Rakesh Maria and the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) cybercrime division, had alleged that a person was in contact with his friends and fans using a fake email address. Roshan came to know about the fake account when he started receiving calls from his friends asking why he was not replying to their e-mails.
Actor Ranaut’s name came into the picture after the e-mail exchanges between her and an account supposedly belonging to Roshan were leaked to the media.
The cyber police station had then recorded the statements of Ranaut and her sister while investigating the fake e-mail account case. Her lawyer had then questioned the “genuineness of the entire complaint lodged by Roshan.”
The public battle between the two actors started after Ranaut in an interview referred to Roshan (“silly ex”) without naming him. Following this, in March 2016, Roshan and Ranaut had sent legal notices to each other.
At the centre of the mud-slinging was an email ID from which Ranaut claimed to have received messages from Roshan, which proved they were in a relationship. Roshan, however, said he had never had an email account with that ID, and that it was an impostor who had been communicating with Ranaut all along.
He then filed the police complaint to track down the person responsible for the fake email ID from which Kangana had received the emails. However, police were unable to track the user.
An officer had then said that the emails originated from a US server, and in the absence of data from there, no user could be identified.
The police previously also contemplated closing the case in absence of evidence, sources said.
Reacting to the latest development, Kangana’s team tweeted, “His sob story starts again, so many years since our break up and his divorce but he refuses to move on, refuses to date any woman, just when I gather courage to find some hope in my personal life he starts the same drama again, @iHrithik kab tak royega ek chote se affair keliye?”
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