Bengaluru, Sept 8: Cyber Crime sleuths in Bengaluru have arrested a 22-year-old unemployed youth for posting hate messages regarding the murder of veteran journalist Gauri Lankesh.
According to report by the Deccan chronicle, Mallanagouda Basanagouda Biradar alias Malli from Surapura taluk of Yadgir district was arrested by the Cyber Crime Police on Wednesday.
A diploma holder in civil engineering, he had created a Facebook profile with the alias Malli Arjun.
Just a few hours after Gauri was brutally murdered outside her home in Bengaluru’s Raja Rajeshwarinagar, Mallanagouda put up a post on Facebook in Kannada - ‘Ondu ganji giraakiya hena bitthu, mikka ganji giraakigaligoo ide gati #gauri_lankesh mataash’.
This post roughly translates to “one person with leftist ideology (the words ganji giraaki is a derogatory term used for those with a leftist ideology) is dead, other such people will also meet the same fate’.
After RTI activists raised slogans against those posting hateful messages just when news about the murder spread. Taking their anger into cognisance, the Cyber Crime police had taken up a suo motu case regarding the post as Malli Arjun’s profile had “similar defamatory posts”.
According to a senior officer with the Cyber Crime, the Central Crime Branch was roped in to track down Malli Arjun.
“Just a few minutes after news about Gauri had spread, he had put up the post. A day later, we nabbed him in Nagarabhavi area and arrested him. He confessed to have posted the hate message and said that he had completed Diploma in civil engineering in Lingasagur and had come to Bengaluru in search of job about two months ago,” the officer added.
Mallanagouda was living in Bengaluru with a man whom he had befriended on Facebook. “He was living in Chandra Layout in Vijayanagar. He has confessed to possessing multiple email IDs and Facebook profiles. He also confessed to using fake documents to obtain SIM cards,” he added.
The Cyber Crime Police have seized Mallanagouda’s mobile phone and the SIM card used while he uploaded the post from his phone. Mallanagouda was remanded to seven-day police custody by the First ACCM court. The police are still grilling Mallanagouda to find out if he was in any way involved in Gauri’s murder.
However, the Police did not mention which sections of the IPC or IT ACT he was booked under.
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