Cyber crime wing of the Hyderabad Police, on Tuesday, issued a notice to Congress poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu to appear before it on 30 December at 11 am in connection with derogatory posts with morphed photographs against Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and his daughter and BRS MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha.
Kanugolu has been absconding ever since the cyber crime wing raided his office in Madhapur on 14 November after receiving several complaints about the derogatory posts, particularly after Kavitha’s name was linked to the Delhi liquor scam.
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The police issued the notice under section 41 of CrPC directing him to appear before it for questioning. In the absence of Kanugolu, the notice was received by senior vice-president of Telangana unit of the Congress, Mallu Ravi.
Kanugolu was the poll strategist of Congress for 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well as the Karnataka and Telangana Assembly elections and the party’s Telangana unit president A Revanth Reddy had alleged that the state government under BRS was using the police to steal its election data. However, the police said it was not aware that the office belonged to a poll strategist of the Congress. Instead, the Hyderabad Police claimed the derogatory posts with “abusive content” originated from the IP addresses of Kanugolu’s office by using proxies.
In an interesting turn of events, senior Congress leader and former PCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy recently stated that Police Commissioner CV Anand had called him to say that certain derogatory social media posts against him had also originated from the same address alleging that Kanugolu and PCC chief Revanth Reddy were conspiring to badmouth the other senior leaders of the Congress through these posts.
Several Congress leaders had complained to the high command about such derogatory posts. Kanugolu who has worked with Prashant Kishore in the past keeps a low profile and seldom appears before the media.