By Mohammed Siddique, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad: The media reports that the police had arrested an internet café and computer center owner in remote Tiruvur town of Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh has caused a flutter among the people in the state today. But it turned out to be a false alarm as the police strongly denied making any such arrest.
A flurry of reports on Telugu news channels throughout the day claimed that the police has arrested one Shaikh Mastan on the basis of intelligence reports that his name and email address was found with the terrorists killed in Mumbai. The reports also claimed that the police had taken away Mastan’s computer and are analyzing it. They also talked of seizure of the CDS of speeches of some Pakistani religious leader.
But the entire story turned out to be baseless and misleading as the Krishna district superintendent of police D Ramakrishnaiah emphatically denied any such arrest. “I have issued a denial to the Telugu media but they are yet to correct their reports”, he said.
According to the SP, as per the state wide red alert, the police in Krishna district was carrying out search and frisking operations and verifying the records of the hotel and lodges as well as the Internet cafes. “As a part of this routine search that we had searched the internet café of Shaikh Mastan. He is a post-graduate in computer sciences and he trains other youth in computers. But a routine check has been turned into something else by the media”, he said.
He denied that Mastan was detained or taken to the police station. “This is all false”, he said. He regretted that the irresponsible report by the media had caused inconvenience to the person concerned as well as the police.