A Mumbai court on Saturday granted bail to a software engineer who was arrested for allegedly threatening to rape the nine-month-old daughter of Indian men’s one-day and Test cricket team captain Virat Kohli and actor Anushka Sharma, reported Bar and Bench.
The Bandra magistrate’s court directed the accused, 23-year-old Ramnagesh Akubathini, to appear before the police station twice a week for one month and submit his residential details.
Akubathini, an Indian Institute of Technology graduate, was arrested on November 10 in Hyderabad and taken to Mumbai. The police said he used to work for a food delivery app.
The accused man had allegedly made the threat after Kohli defended pacer Mohammed Shami, who was abused on social media following the team’s loss to Pakistan in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. Shami was the only Muslim player in India’s 15-member World Cup squad.
Kohli was also attacked online after his defence of his teammate.
Akubathini was produced before the court on November 11. The public prosecutor had told the court that Akubathini had constantly changed his profile name on social media to troll the cricketer before he was tracked down. He was remanded to police custody till November 16.
Later, he was remanded to judicial custody on November 16. Akubathini then applied for bail.
In his bail plea, Akubathini had said that the charges against against him were not punishable with death or even life imprisonment. He also said that further investigation was needed to determine if he had actually posted the rape threat, reported India Today.
“That, prima facie Akubathini is arrested on a suspicion that the said tweet has been tweeted by him which is not yet established by the evidence on record,” the plea stated.
The plea contended that it was possible that the Internet Protocol, or IP address of the phone recovered from him could have been hacked. Such misuse falls under identity theft, the application said.
“Cyber crimes are carried out with the misuse of IP addresses and the said fact is an established fact,” the application said. “Merely tracing of IP address cannot attribute the said crime to Akubathini.”
ID addresses show the location of a device and can be used to identify them.
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