The man arrested over rape threats to Virat Kohli’s nine-month-old daughter happens to be an IIT Hyderabad graduate, who has a history of online trolling using multiple identities.
However, to his family and friends, he was a diligent topper planning higher studies in the US.
According to the police, Ram Nagesh Srinivas Akubathini, 23, is a software engineer who had been working with a prominent food delivery app in Bengaluru until a month ago, until he quit his job to prepare for a master’s degree in the US.
He is in a lock-up in Mumbai after his arrest in Hyderabad on Wednesday. In a few days, he would have headed to a US University but he had not bargained on getting caught.
Ram Nagesh had reportedly ranked 2367 in the IIT-JEE or entrance exam and was a class 10 topper. Ram Nagesh was known to study hard, well into the night, kept to himself with his interactions being mostly online. A Telangana police officer said Ram Nagesh’s father works in an ordnance factory at Sanga Reddy in Medak district. His father and a friend have gone with him to Mumbai.
Ram Nagesh has a younger brother. The family, described as upper middle class, did not know of his trolling activities, the police say. They just knew that he was passionate about cricket and had been upset after India’s defeat in back-to-back T20 World Cup matches, first to Pakistan and then New Zealand.
Mumbai police sources said that Ram Nagesh followed an account called “Gappistan Radio” that had tweeted against Virat Kohli, which led to a Twitter war between fans and haters.
After his late night tweet threatening the cricket captain’s baby daughter, Ram Nagesh allegedly deactivated the account in the morning, realising he had made a huge mistake while deleting two more accounts. But Virat Kohli’s manager had already complained to the Mumbai Police Cyber Cell and an FIR (First Information Report) had been filed.
His family claims he posted the rape threat “accidentally”. He “must have mistyped after removing his lenses and he immediately deleted the post”, his father said.
