The Cyber Crime investigation team at Kangana Ranaut’s residence in Khar, Mumbai. Express Photo by Dilip Kagda
A team of Mumbai Police on Saturday formally recorded actor Kangana Ranaut’s statement at her Khar residence.
According to the police, the “imposter” with whom actor Kangana Ranaut had been communicating would be tracked down by them in a matter of days, provided the actress was willing to give them access to the e-mail communication between her and the person who used the ID hroshan@email.com.
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Sources said that the police team would be asking her for her laptop or her e-mail address from where they can retrieve e-mails received from the imposter in the course of the probe.
This, the police believe, can then be used to track down the place from where the e-mails were sent, thereby leading them to the imposter. “If we get access to her e-mail, tracking down the imposter should be a matter of days,” an official said.
A source said there were two ways in which they could find where the e-mails sent by the “imposter” originated from. First, is the long-drawn procedure of asking the US-based service provider ‘email.com’ to give them details about the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer where the ID hroshan@email.com was created.
“This could be a time-consuming process as the police team would have to send a letter to a US court from an Indian court that would then ask the service provider to give details. It could take months,” the source said.
The second and the more practical option is to get the IP address of the computer used to send emails with the help of the ‘header lines’ that every e-mail has. “The header lines of a received e-mail can be used to track down the IP address from where the e-mail is sent,” the officer said.
Once the police got the IP address, tracking down the person who used the computer to create the e-mail address would not be that big a problem, he added.
“The only thing that can go wrong is if the ‘imposter’ had sent the e-mails using a proxy server, it will be impossible to track down the IP address,” the source said.
All of this would of course be possible only if Kangana allowed the police access to her e-mail or laptop, he added.
Earlier in the day, Kangana’s lawyer told the police that he had kept her statement ready and the police team could come and collect it from her Khar residence.
The police team, however, informed them that they had their own set of questions which they would want to ask Kangana rather than take her statement.
A team led by inspector Kalpana Gadekar, who has in the past been the investigating officer in the Jiah Khan suicide case, reached the Khar residence of the actor in the evening and left around 8.20 pm.
Kangana’s lawyer Rizwan Siddiquee said, “Police were called to the residence of my client to record her statement at 4 pm today. However, because of traffic issues the team dropped by at 4.45 pm. My client was scheduled to go for another meeting by 5 pm. But to accommodate the officer and her team she rescheduled her other meetings and recorded her statement along with her sister.”
Hrithik had given a written complaint to the cyber police station, stating that an imposter had been communicating with Kangana, claiming to be Hrithik and using the e-mail address hroshan@email.com.
The actor stated that he was surprised when Kangana informed him that she had been exchanging e-mails with him on that e-mail address. He told her that he did not have anything to do with hroshan@email.com and gave a letter to the cyber police to probe the matter.
On March 5, the actor once again sent a reminder letter to the cyber police, requesting the police to probe the case.
The police initially took the written complaint and after an initial probe, registered an offence in the last week of March under relevant sections of the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal Code.
The police had sent summons to Kangana as she was the witness in the case. She had received the e-mails from hroshan@email.com, said to be the ID used by the imposter posing as Hrithik.
mohamed.thaver@expressindia.com
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