A real estate agent based in Bangalore was arrested in Chennai on Sunday for allegedly harassing Tamil film heroine Sneha by sending frequent text messages on her mobile phone urging her to marry him.
Sneha had on Saturday submitted a complaint to the city police commissioner T Rajendran claiming that she was receiving text messages bordering on sexual harassment on her phone from an unindentified person. The sender was pestering the heroine to marry him.
The police commissioner forwarded the complaint to the cyber crime wing. An investigation team headed by assistant commissioner of police (cyber crime) M Sudhakar traced the mobile number to N Raghavendra of Bangalore. He was tracked down and arrested from T Nagar in Chennai.
This is the second instance of a film star being harassed by a love-struck fan in the recent past in Tamil Nadu. Earlier, a Malaysia-based diehard female fan of top actor Suriya had come under police scrutiny when she repeatedly called him at odd hours urging him to marry her. That incident happened two years ago.
In the present case, police have registered a case under various sections and arrested Ragavendra. He was remanded in judicial custody after being produced before the XI metropolitan magistrate court in Saidapet on Sunday. Police recovered his mobile phone and sent it to the cyber lab for verifying whether he had sent the text messages to Sneha using this mobile phone.
"Based on information provided by the service provider, we located the address of Raghavendra and questioned family members in Bangalore about his whereabouts. Raghavendra had actually come down to Chennai to meet some of his business associates. Subsequently, we traced his whereabouts city using his mobile phone tower location. On an indication that he was somewhere in T Nagar area, we accosted one of his friends and asked him to talk to Raghavendra to trace his exact location. Based on this information, a police team nabbed Raghavendra in front of a hotel in T Nagar and took him into custody," deputy commissioner of police (central crime branch) C Sridhar told The Times Of India.
Initially, Raghavendra denied the allegation but later conceded to having sent the text messages to Sneha. Raghavendra, a B Com graduate, had trained in an auditor's office in Bangalore and is now engaged in the real estate business. He was acquainted with realtors in Chennai and used their contacts to tap potential buyers of properties here; he often travelled to the city.
"He claimed to have got Sneha's mobile number from a contact in Chennai last year and from then on he had been sending love text messages to her. Initially Sneha ignored these messages, but she took it seriously when she received messages with an intimidating tone," a police officer said.
SOURCE: TOI
