Aryan Kumar Singh was just another teenager walking around the campus of English and Foreign Language University when classes got over this Monday. The 19-year-old from Patna, Bihar, is a first-year BA English literature student in the university and was still finding his feet about in the city — that was perhaps all most of his friends on the campus knew. That was till Monday night.
Four days on, Singh has achieved enough notoriety for many Eflu students to hold a demonstration on campus on Thursday and demand his expulsion. Reason: the police have identified Singh as the person who allegedly sent “vulgar” text messages and harassed his lecturer. Police said Singh, who carried eight cellphone SIM cards, sent two abusive messages to his French lecturer on Monday night. For the next two days he sent six messages in all — each sent using a different SIM, and using a different classmate’s name at the end of each message to throw her off track.
Troubled, the lecturer is learnt to have approached the Osmania police on Tuesday. However, the case was later forwarded to the cyber crime branch. A cyber crime police official said they had been tracing all numbers from which the messages were sent and finally zoomed in on Singh on Thursday while he was speaking on phone using one of the SIMs under surveillance. With the lecturer subsequently having withdrawn the complaint and asking the university to take action after establishing the suspect’s guilt, the police did not arrest him. Instead, they presented him in front of the Vice-Chancellor. University officials said they are looking into the matter and will decide the punishment.