Police on Thursday arrested an ex-employee of a private school, run by MLA, Christine Lazarus, for allegedly sending threatening messages to the latter’s daughter-in-law.
The accused, B. Ravi Chaitanya, 37, told his interrogators that he wanted to take revenge on the MLA by mentally harassing her family members, accusing her of implicating him in a false case of money misappropriation. The MLA had lodged a complaint with the Saifabad police last year alleging that Chaitanya, who was working as teacher in Deafreach-Creed, a private school for the physically challenged being run by her, had embezzled one lakh rupees belonging to the school.
Chaitanya used to teach English, computers and personality development skills. He was arrested and remanded in judicial custody in that case. After coming out on bail, he decided to take vengeance by harassing the MLA’s family members, the Cyber Crime cell Inspector, T.S. Uma Maheshwar Rao, said. Chaitanya went to a cyber café and created an id for himself in ‘Rediff Bol’, an online chatting service having options of sending short messages to mobile phones, as mailmefuturecareers@rediffbol.com.
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He started sending messages to the MLA’s daughter-in-law threatening to kidnap the latter’s children. “He took precautions not to be tracked by the IP address and sent messages from different cyber cafes,” Mr. Rao explained. Chatanya allegedly continued to intimidate the woman warning to leave the city or face abduction and killing of her children and target her husband.
The Hyderabad Detective Department registered a criminal case under section 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) of Indian Penal Code and assigned the investigation to the Cyber Crime cell. There were little clues to trace the accused but finally the sleuths zeroed in on him by tracking the IP address. Chaitanya was picked up from his house at Padmaraonagar in Secunderabad.