Tamil Nadu techie held for creating director Sriram Raghavan’s fake Instagram profile to lure female models

A software engineer from Tamil Nadu was arrested by the Mumbai police for allegedly creating a fake Instagram profile of director Sriram Raghavan and duping aspiring actresses, by asking them to take part in photo shoots involving nudity for a web series.

According to the Versova police, the incident came to light went the actresses contacted the real Raghavan, who is a National Award-winning director known for directing movies like ‘Andhadhun’ and ‘Agent Vinod’, and made him aware of the scammer who is impersonating him and luring actresses. The director then filed a complaint at Versova police station.  During the complaint, the director also provided the police with the links related to the fake profiles.

“The director told us that he has a Facebook account but he is not present on any other social media platforms, however, he started receiving alerts by aspiring models and actresses regarding a person who made a fake Instagram and Facebook account with his name and has been sending emails as well to the actresses regarding nude photo shoots since a year,” said Assistant Police Inspector, Javed Shaikh, Versova police, who is investigating the case.

“We sent a team to Tamil Nadu and have arrested the accused, we will conduct further probe in this case regarding the women who he approached and might have been duped by him,” added the cop.

The accused, identified as Shanmuga Thangavel, 31, interacted with the victims and offered them a role in a web series and told them that there are nudity scenes in the web series for which they will have to do a photo shoot which had to be sent to his email address, added the police.

The accused was traced to Tiruchengode in Tamil Nadu and has been booked under sections 419 (cheating by impersonation) of the Indian Penal Code and 66 C (identity theft) of the IT Act.