Hyderabad: Sex predator uses exam data to trap, sexually exploit and blackmail girls

Hyderabad: Meticulousness. This is what set apart this sex predator from Hyderabad from others of his kind. He leveraged technology to enlist, identify, contact and lure girls. He maintained a register and ticked off those he was done with. On the face of it, what he did involved thorough planning and execution, but obviously, that was hardly a deterrent for Kalakanda Madhu. [caption id=“attachment_2481554” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP[/caption] Madhu, the police believe, sexually exploited scores of college girls over a period of time through his unusual modus operandi. The 33-year-old suspended assistant manager in the Food Corporation of India from Nalgonda in Telangana lured his victims by offering them career guidance, according to Additional Commissioner of Hyderabad City Police Swati Lakra. He began by downloading the profiles and contact information from the hall-ticket data of girl students of class 10, intermediate, Osmania University Common Entrance Test, and Osmania University PG examinations. This information, made available on the websites, is intended to provide details to students by the authorities concerned. Madhu connived with one Siva, who runs an internet centre at LB Nagar in the city, and downloaded the data. He accessed the details of nearly 5,000 students of various classes and listed their phone numbers and addresses, said Lakra. Based on the cellular phone number of each girl, Madhu bought SIM cards of the respective mobile service providers. He exploited the loophole in the sale of SIM cards by buying them from roadside kiosks set up by the service providers to promote sales. Since filling personal details and providing proof of bona fides are mandatory to obtain SIM connection, he paid extra money to the sellers of mobile connections in Chaitanyapuri and Punjagutta (which are almost 20 km apart) and got his cards with the help of fake personal data and fake names – Bingi Maheswar and Gujjalwar Satish. He had 20 SIM cards using which he made calls to the girls (his targets) with different alias names. Madhu, good at glib talk, would convince the girls that he was a career counsellor and that he would provide them the best guidance for a bright career. He used to make the calls after sending them postcard greetings on their respective birthdays (as obtained form the examination hall-ticket data). If the parents of the girls answered, he would cut the call. If the girls themselves answered, he would lure them to meet him. Once acquainted, he collected the social network profiles of some of those girls. Madhu sexually abused whoever surrendered to him and blackmailed a few others, who were reluctant, by saying that he would post sensitive information and upload their obscene pictures on social media. He marked “over” against the names of the girls whom he had abused, and “danger” against the names of those who questioned and shouted at him. Madhu classified those who refused to yield or sounded reluctant as “waste”. All this classification was marked in the registers. He rented two houses in Bandlaguda and Nagole areas where he took the girls. The police recovered several bottles of I-pills (emergency contraceptive), 19 mobile phones, a desktop and a laptop, two motorcycles, and the pen drive in which the data is stored in digital form. Cases of sexual harassment were registered against him in 2012. He now faces many criminal cases in several police stations in the city. The police took three months to connect the dots and establish the criminality of Madhu following a complaint by two girls.