Vijayawada: In a sign of the growing intolerance or criticism of the government, the Andhra Pradesh police on Friday arrested a man for posting “derogatory” content about the AP Legislative Council. Tulluru police took away the administrator of the Facebook page, ‘Political Punch,’ Inturi Ravi Kiran, in the early hours of Friday from his residence at Shamshabad in Hyderabad.
The Facebook page has more than 90,000 followers and is known for its political satirisation of the ruling Telugu Desam and its leaders Nara Lokesh and his father, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
The complaint was made by AP Assembly secretary K. Satyanarayana, and the Tulluru police registered a case against the administrator of the page under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act and Section 292 of the IPC.
Mr Kiran’s wife Sujana said she has no information about where her husband had been taken.
“A group of people knocked on our door at around 3.30 am in the morning and asked Ravi Kiran to come with them. When we asked who they were, one of them said they were police from Tulluru but did not give any more details,” she said.
She also said that her husband used to work in the YSR Congress social media cell at the party office.
Guntur rural SP K. Narayan Naik confirmed the arrest of Ravi Kiran and said he was in their custody. He said, “We received a complaint from the Assembly secretary that the AP Legislative Council was depicted in an obscene manner. The morphed pictures were derogatory in a manner that a couple was kissing in front of the Council and a message that reads: ‘Adults only’. The same post had pictures of Nara Lokesh asking his father N. Chandrababu Naidu to send him to “Peddala Sabha.”
Accused’s wife seeks help from Cyberabad police
The wife of Mr Inturi Ravi Kiran, who was arrested by the AP Police early on Friday for allegedly derogatory posts on Facebook, submitted a petition to Cyberabad Police seeking action. She said the family had not been informed about the arrest nor the reasons for the same.
Ms Sujana in her petition to DCP Shamshabad P.V. Padmaja said she had asked the AP Police to inform her about her husband’s whereabouts. “Some people knocked on our door at around 3.30 am. When I opened the door, they started asking details of my husband. Later they identified themselves as AP Police and took him away for interrogation,” she said.
She said that she asked the police for the reasons for the arrest but they refused to reply and took Mr Kiran away.
The DCP said the TS police could not initiate any action as the case was registered in Andhra Pradesh, and Mr Kiran’s arrest was confirmed by the local police at Tulluru.
