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HYDERABAD: Task Force police arrested a temple priest and his relative who allegedly made threatening phone calls to textile minister Shankar Rao and several other public representatives from the city. The priest did all this to allegedly take revenge on his father-in-law and implicate him in the case as he had lodged a police complaint against him for resorting to domestic violence.

While talking to the media on January 29, textile minister P Shankar Rao had alleged that he had been getting threatening calls from unidentified persons. Based on a directive by DGP K Aravinda Rao, Task Force DCP V B Kamalasan Reddy got the details from the minister. After analysing the calls and investigating into the case, police arrested P Sai Dinesh, 29, a priest at a Ramalayam in Kurnool district and his uncle R Viswanatham, also a priest from Kandukur in Kurnool district, from their homes.

According to police, Sai Dinesh was married to the eldest daughter of one Gopala Rao from Jeevangi village near Tandur. As he was allegedly harassing his wife, both physically and mentally, a case was registered under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, against Dinesh and his parents. Bearing a grudge against his in-laws for lodging the police complaint, Dinesh hatched a plan to implicate Gopala Rao in a false case.

To execute his plan, Dinesh obtained a photocopy of Gopala Rao’s ration card and his passport-size photographs. Using these documents, Dinesh managed to secure SIM cards of various mobile service providers and purchased some mobile phones.

Later, Dinesh hired two persons to make threatening calls to political leaders from those phones, whose numbers he got from the civic issues columns of a Telugu daily.

As per the plan, Dinesh’s associates went to Gopala Rao’s village near Tandur and made several threatening calls to various political leaders, including minister Shankar Rao, Congress MLA Jayasudha, MP Anjan Kumar Yadav, BJP MLA Kishan Reddy and MIM MLA Afsar Khan.

His aim was to get his father-in-law Gopala Rao arrested. To evade police dragnet, Dinesh used Videocon cellphones, which have facility to change voice of the caller and asked his associates to immediately destroy both cellphone and SIM cards after making the calls, DCP VB Kamalasan Reddy said.

The accused have been handed over to the Kacheguda police and cases were slapped against them under Section 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code ( IPC).