Anushka-Virat Quash FIR Against IIT Grad Who Sent Rape Threats to Their Daughter

Bombay High Court quashed the FIR after Virat Kohli's manager granted consent to drop charges against the accused.

Anushka Sharma and Virat Kohli with their daughter Vamika.

(Photo Courtesy: Instagram)

The Bombay High Court on 10 April quashed the FIR and charge sheet against an IIT graduate accused of tweeting rape threats to the eleven-month-old daughter of actor Anushka Sharma and her cricketer husband Virat Kohli.

Virat and Anushka consented to quash their FIR against the accused, as per a report by Live Law.

In continuation of the Live Law report, the FIR was quashed by a division bench of Justices AS Gadkari and PK Naik. The FIR was registered against Hyderabad techie Ramnagesh Srinivas Akubathini by the Cyber Police under Sections 354A (sexual harassment), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 500 (defamation) of the IPC and Sections 67 and 67B of the IT Act 2000.

Anushka and Virat had filed the complaint through their manager, Aquilia Norman D'Souza; hence, the "no objection" to quash it came through D'Souza as well.

In addition to the report, D’Souza alleged that Ramnagesh had written to her on 5 April 2023, requesting the couple's consent to quashing the FIR registered against him.

As per Live Law, Anushka and Virat directed D'Souza to grant the case a "no-objection" once they were satisfied with the genuineness of Ramnagesh's letter.

According to the Live Law report, in October 2021, Virat stood up for Indian cricketer Mohammad Shami, who was trolled for his poor performance against Pakistan in the T20 World Cup match, which India lost to Pakistan for the first time.

Shami received a lot of online hatred based on his religion. As per the prosecution, Ramnagesh overstepped his bounds while replying to some comments and made sexually coloured remarks against the daughter of one of the members of the Indian Cricket Team. The tweet was allegedly shared in response to a thread of tweets from two accounts.

Following the incident, an FIR was filed against Ramnagesh based on Virat's manager's complaint. Moreover, while granting bail to Ramnagesh in November 2022, the Magistrate stated that he didn't appear to have addressed his remarks directly to Virat or his family.