Cyber stalker techie arrested

The cyber crime police of the state CID on Saturday attested a techie working with Hewlett Packard of Bengaluru for posting a young woman’s photograph and personal details on sex escorts websites after she spurned his marriage proposal.

He also termed the young woman’s father her broker and gave his telephone number for “clients” to call.

Sleuths finally trapped the cyber stalker, Madisetty Shiva Shankar, 29, a native of Indiranagar in Ramantapur, with the help of the young woman herself.

Shiva Shankar had been harassing the young woman, an employee of an IT firm in the city, from October 2009. Since he used a proxy Internet Protocol Address which led to the United States, police couldn’t trace him all these months.

It all started in 2008 when Shiva Shankar, then in the US, saw the young woman’s photograph in a matrimonial website and made a marriage proposal.

“But she refused the marriage proposal because of personal reasons,” said a police officer. “Shiva Shankar sent his father three to four times to her house. He was obsessed with the young woman and came all the way from the US to see her. He also sent her emails asking whether she liked him.”

She didn’t reply to her mails and this angered Shiva Shankar. Meanwhile, he returned to India and took up work in HP Bengaluru.

To take revenge on the young woman, he morphed her photograph and splashed her details on sex sites.

The young woman’s family approached the cyber police seeking removal of her name from the sites. But the harassment continued. Shiva Shankar even created fake profiles for her on Facebook and Orkut saying she offered body massages at specific rates.

The cyber crime SP, Ms B. Sumati, said after a torturous investigation police realised that the culprit was in Hyderabad itself and was using proxy servers.

Finally, the cyber cops persuaded the young woman to send him an email and later her mobile number. After a while, he called her up and disclosed his identity and cops nabbed him.

The SP said that the cyber crime police was dealing with 12 complaints of such nature. “Even schoolkids are being victimised,” she said.