Hyderabad-based techie held for making abusive comments against YSRC MLA on TikTok

Andhra Pradesh police on Thursday arrested a 24-year-old software engineer from Hyderabad for posting a video on TikTok, a short mobile video application, allegedly making abusive comments against YSR Congress party lawmaker Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy.

According to Telugu Desam Party social media wing coordinator, K Naga Sravan, the police from Macherla in Guntur district picked up Avinash Chowdary Dhulipalla, working for a multinational company, from his residence at Kukatpally in Hyderabad in the early hours.

“They didn’t even inform his parents as to who they were and where they were taking him to. Later, we came to know that the Macherla police arrested him following a complaint from the MLA’s followers,” Sravan told Hindustan Times.

Reddy’s car was vandalised by agitated farmers of Amaravati at Chinna Kakani village on Tuesday as part of their national highway blockade against the proposed shifting of the capital to Visakhapatam.

Reddy, who represents Macherla assembly constituency, later held a press conference and accused TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu of masterminding the attack on his car.

On Wednesday, Dhulipalla, supposed to be a TDP sympathiser, posted the video on TikTok, attacking the MLA in abusive language for making derogatory comments against Naidu. He said the MLA had no stature to criticise the TDP president.

Following a complaint from the YSRC party unit in Macherla, the police swooped down on Dhulipalla’s residence in Hyderabad and took him to the police station. “He was taken from Macherla to Veldurthy, the native place of the YSRC MLA, where he was beaten indiscriminately by the police and the MLA’s followers,” Sravan said.

Following the intervention of the lawyers engaged by the TDP, the police brought Dhulipalla back to Macherla, where he was released on bail and dropped at Nagarjunasagar on the borders of Telangana, Sravan said.

When contacted, Macherla town inspector G Rajeshwar Rao admitted that the man was arrested following a complaint from the party leaders in the town. “We booked a case against him under Section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and Section 506 (criminal intimidation), besides various sections under the Information Technology Act,” the inspector said.

He, however, denied of subjecting Dhulipalla to torture. “We only questioned him and released him on bail, as it is a bailable offence,” he said.

TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh strongly condemned the arrest of Dhulipalla. He said the arrest was an infringement on the freedom of expression of social media activists and warned that the police would have to pay penalty for slapping false cases on TDP sympathisers.