BENGALURU: Darshan’s fan Renuka Swamy started sending the star’s girlfriend
Pavithra
Gowda messages through a fake Instagram profile two weeks before his June 8
murder
and the messages turned lewd in the week before his killing allegedly at the hands of the actor and his aides, according to a senior police officer.
Police have also claimed that Swamy messaged, some with obscene content, many other women.
These including a couple of actresses.
Pavithra has been arrested along with Darshan and his aides over the murder. According to the senior officer, Swamy posted comments on Pavithra’s Instagram posts criticising her relationship with Darshan, prompting her to block him.
Swamy then began sending the
lewd messages
, including pictures of his private parts, to Pavithra through the fake Instagram profile ‘Reddy2205’, created in the name of Tanisha Reddy and opened much earlier, police said. The fake account has about 500 followers and Swamy was following 2,348 people. He had posted around 304 messages through it.
Asked about the details of other women whom Swamy allegedly messaged, the senior police officer said: “We are not sure whom all he had sent the messages as his phone is missing. We are going to write to Instagram to give details about the account. We will submit them in court while filing the chargesheet,” the officer said.
According to the officer, the messages sent to Pavithra through the
fake profile
had been collected from her account. “We have seized her phone and taken screenshots of a few messages he had sent her and a few posts he had made about Darshan travelling with his wife Vijayalakshmi,” the officer said.
An annoyed Pavithra is said to have informed Pavan K, an aide working for her on instructions of Darshan and is among those arrested, about the messages and asked him to track Swamy down.
Pavan traced Swamy to Chitradurga and told Darshan about the messages. According to Pavan’s confession, Darshan asked his men to kidnap Swamy and bring him to Bengaluru, where was allegedly thrashed to death in a shed.
Police are scouring a storm-drain in Bengaluru’s Sumanahalli along which Swamy’s body was dumped, for his mobile phones as well as those of Raghavendra, one of his alleged killers.