Mumbai: A man has been arrested by the police in the rape threats to Indian Cricket Team Captain Virat Kohli’s nine-month year old daughter. The man is identified as an IIT Hyderabad graduate with a history of online trolling using multiple identities, say the Hyderabad police.
Ramnagesh Srinivas Akubathini, 23, is a software engineer who had worked with a prominent food delivery app in Bengaluru until recently. He reportedly quit the job to prepare for a master’s degree in the US.
He is currently in prison in Mumbai after his arrest in Hyderabad on Wednesday. In a few days, he would have headed to a US University but he had not bargained on getting caught.
According to a Hyderabad police officer, Ramnagesh Akubathini’s father works in an ordnance factory. His father and a friend have accompanied him to Mumbai.
Ramnagesh, who ranked 2367 in the IIT-JEE, has a younger brother. The family, described as upper middle class, did not know of his trolling activities, said the police.
They just knew that he was passionate about cricket and had been deeply upset after India’s defeat in the T20 World Cup matches, first to Pakistan and then New Zealand.Ads by
His family claims he posted the rape threat “accidentally”.
When the tweet screenshot went viral and was flagged to the police in Mumbai and Delhi, Ramnagesh changed his Twitter handle (@ramanheist) and pretended to be a Pakistani user @criccrazyygirl. But his handle was tracked down by fact-check websites. He also used another handle, @pellikuturuhere, which means “bride” in Telugu and indicated that the twitter handle belonged to a Telugu-speaking person.
Vicious comments had appeared on social media after India’s loss to Pakistan in the T20 World Cup in Dubai on October 24. Virat Kohli was also attacked after he spoke out against the incessant trolling of his teammate, Mohammed Shami, over his religion, after the loss.
“Attacking someone over their religion is the most pathetic thing one can do as a human. That is a very sacred and personal thing. People take out their frustration because they have no understanding of what we do,” Virat Kohli had reporters before the match with New Zealand.
“We’re playing on the field, we’re not a bunch of spineless people on social media. This has become a source of entertainment for some people which is very sad. All this drama created on the outside is based on people’s frustrations. We stand by him 200 per cent. Our brotherhood in the team cannot be shaken,” Kohli had said.
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