Hyderabad: A 25-year-old man, identified as Gopinath, was held for creating a fake Facebook profile of Telugu TV artiste Sagar Naidu of Mogali Rekulu fame. Gopinath had uploaded the actor’s profile picture, sent and accepted friend requests. He had also started chatting with women online and over the phone by convincing them that he was the actor.
Gopinath, a second-year BCom student from Khammam, had created the fake account about three months ago. He used Sagar’s picture as his profile picture and had left his own personal number. He started sending friend requests, mostly to women, from this account and even accepted the requests sent by the Sagar’s fans who thought this was the actor’s real FB page.
When the actor learnt about this, he lodged a complaint with the police. “One of Sagar’s friends, who saw the phone number on the profile, checked with the real actor, who said it was not his number. Based on his complaint on Saturday, a case was registered under Sections 419 and 420 of the IPC and Section 6 c(d) of the IT Act,” said K. Narsimulu, inspector of police, Madhapur police station.
The cops laid a trap to nab the accused. As Gopinath had claimed on FB that he was involved in several social service activities and needed donations. “We called him up and told him that we were interested in making a donation. He came to meet us and we nabbed him,” said Mr Narsimulu.
During interrogation, Gopinath confessed that he committed the crime due to financial crisis.
