Farmer-turned-cyber crook held

​Hyderabad: Sleuths of the cyber crime wing of the city police on Friday arrested a cyber crook identified as Uppuluri Mani Ratnam, a farmer living in Nandamuru village of East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh.

According to the police, the 23-year-old accused has been sending offensive and abusive messages to women on social media networks. The accused also harassed a Sub-Inspector of police, he not only threatened the police officer but also hacked the latter’s Facebook account and sent objectionable messages to women on the friends list as if to show that the messages were sent by the SI.

Police said that the SI, a member of the Hyderabad SHE teams, had received lot of complaints against Mani Ratnam from women through the city police app Hawkeye. With an intention to counsel and stop the accused from resorting to unlawful activity through internet, the SI tried to contact him on his mobile number.

However, the accused did not receive the call and instead sent a threatening message to the SI some time later. Subsequently, he also hacked the Facebook account of the SI and sent out friend requests to several women besides sending objectionable messages to women as if to show that the messages were sent by the SI, police said.