A businesswoman was apprehended by the police in a bizarre case of alleged stalking and kidnapping of a TV music channel anchor in a bid to marry him. The woman, aged 31 and running a digital marketing business, had taken extreme measures to track the anchor’s movements by installing a tracking device on his car. The woman’s obsession with the anchor began when she came across his photos on a matrimony website two years ago. Believing him to be the account holder, she initiated conversations, only to realize later that the photos were being used fraudulently. Upon further investigation, she managed to obtain the anchor’s phone number.
Attempting to reach out to the anchor, she was shocked to learn that someone had impersonated him on the matrimony site. After coming to know about it, Victim Pranav, a techie who also works part-time as anchor on a Telugu TV channel, filed a complaint with the Cyber Crime police.
However, the woman, identified as Trisha, continued to send messages to the anchor. He then blocked her number, police said. “The woman, who was determined to marry the anchor, planned to kidnap him, thinking she could get things sorted out,” police said.
Accordingly, she hired four persons to kidnap the anchor and also installed a tracking device on the victim’s car to watch his movements.
On February 11, the four hired men kidnapped the victim and took him to the office of the woman and beat him up badly. Fearing for his life, the TV anchor agreed to respond to the woman’s calls and only then was he let off.
He later lodged a complaint with Uppal police station, and a case was registered under 363 (kidnapping), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement), and relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
During the course of the investigation, the police apprehended the accused woman along with the four men she hired to carry out the abduction.
