HYDERABAD: Hyderabad Cybercrime sleuths raided Telangana Congress strategist Sunil Kanugolu’s office in HiTec City on Tuesday, seizing several documents and laptops for alleged derogatory comments against Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Facebook. Three employees at Sunil Kanugolu’s office, Eshaan, Shashank and Mandha were arrested. Some CPUs and hard disks were seized and shifted to the police station. The searches continued late into the night.
The mobile phones of employees in the office were taken away during the raid and switched off so that they could not deactivate any social media accounts.
Cybercrime police raided Sunil’s office, located near the Inorbit Mall, following a complaint that it created a couple of Facebook accounts and posted “misinformation”. Hyderabad Cybercrime ACP KVM Prasad said that an FIR was registered following five different complaints received by the police over derogatory comments being posted on Facebook by Sunil’s office.
Reacting strongly to the incident, TPCCpresident A Revanth Reddy called for state-wide protests in all mandal headquarters against Telangana police laying siege to what he called the “Congress’war room” run by Sunil.
Raid created panic among women employees: Cong
Revanth said the BRS-led government was trying to suppress the voice of the Congress. Six Congress leaders Mohammad Ali Shabbir, Mallu Ravi, Rohin Reddy, Eravathri Anil, Anil Kumar Yadav and Fahim Qureshi were taken into preventive custody when they reached the office along with Sunil and got into heated arguments with the police. They were later released.
Sunil alleged that he was not served any prior notice by the police about the raids. Mallu Ravi and Mohammad Ali Shabbir questioned the ‘unlawful’ means being adopted by the police to create an atmosphere of fear in the functioning of what they called the ‘analysis team’ in the Congress.
The police explained to Mallu Ravi that there were five cases booked against the office by five different persons for posting derogatory posts on social media against the Chief Minister. “There were women working in this office panicked due to the raid,” said Shabbir Ali.
SIX LEADERS HELD, RELEASED
Hyderabad: Six Congress leaders Md Ali Shabbir, Mallu Ravi, Rohin Reddy, Eravathri Anil, Anil Kumar Yadav and Fahim Qureshi were taken into preventive custody when they reached the office along with Sunil and got into heated arguments with the police. They were later released.
