A suspended engineer of the Irrigation Department and two others who allegedly tried to extort money from a senior IAS officer by sending offensive mails to his colleagues, were arrested by the cyber crime officials of the city police on Monday.
The sleuths moved in following a complaint lodged by Tribal Welfare Secretary, A. Vidyasagar, that he had been receiving ‘highly offensive and derogatory' mails, which were also being sent to his colleagues.
Mr. Vidyasagar also complained that the mails were meant to malign him and his wife, K. Ratnaprabha, also an IAS officer.
According to a police press release, the investigators traced the IP addresses of the hate mails originating from ajforpj@gmail.com and found that it was A. Siva Prasad of Proddatur in Kadapa district who was sending the mails. He was also member of the PUCL and was suspended from the Irrigation Department when he was working as an assistant engineer. The other two arrested persons, B. Vatsala (45) of Prakasam district, and A. Venkataramana (47), an advocate of Miyapur, had allegedly tried to extort money from Mr. Vidyasagar, the press release added.
Vatsala, police said, who started a publication house and a magazine befriended some IAS officers and gained the confidence of Mr. Vidyasagar.
She later began claiming that she had a relationship with him and ganged up with Siva Prasad and Venkataramana to intimidate, defame and extort money from him, police said.
In this process, hate mails with misleading content were forwarded to various government offices and media organisations too.
Police seized a computer from which the mails were believed to have been sent. Investigations also revealed that there were two criminal cases pending against Siva Prasad in Proddatur and Kurnool for allegedly demanding Rs. 25 lakh from an IFS officer and two cases in Cyber Crime police station. Vatsala too was allegedly involved in two cases which were pending trial, police said.
