A police complaint was filed against actor-politician Pawan Kalyan on Wednesday with the Central Crime Station (CCS) in Hyderabad.
The complaint, filed by B Mahender, the HR manager of ABN Andhra Jyothi news channel, alleged that the Jana Sena party chief was intentionally targeting the media outlet with 'forged' evidence.
“He had posted a 'forged' video clip of actress Sri Reddy abusing him from his Twitter handle. The channel had muted the video and telecast it,” the complainant was quoted as saying.
Deputy Commissioner of Police of the Detective Department, Avinash Mohanty, also told reporters that the channel said it had censored the objectionable word, while Pawan Kalyan had tweeted an unedited version.
The police is seeking legal advice and will decide on whether to book a case soon.
This comes days after Pawan was served a notice from entrepreneur Srini Raju, a shareholder in Associated Broadcasting Company Private Ltd (ABCL), the parent company of TV9 Telugu.
Srini Raju’s advocate sent a legal notice to Pawan demanding deletion of the tweets, failing which ‘appropriate legal action’ would be taken.
The entire incident began after actor Sri Reddy, who was hopping from one TV studio to the other on the issue of sexual harassment in Tollywood, euphemistically dubbed ‘casting couch’, resorted to abusing Pawan Kalyan on TV.
The actor abused Pawan Kalyan’s mother and showed him the middle finger on TV, and the Jana Sena chief also took offence at the coverage of the incident by the Telugu media, which repeatedly telecast the swear word and gesture.
Pawan himself, has said that he is contemplating to approach the Telangana police to ask them to probe the alleged ‘malicious’ campaign, which the media have been carrying out against him for the past six months.
Earlier this week, five self-proclaimed fans of Pawan Kalyan were arrested for allegedly vandalising the broadcast van of ABN Andhra Jyothi in Hyderabad.
The self-proclaimed fans were arrested under section 147 (punishment for rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 427 (mischief causing damage), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC.
The Telangana Union of Working Journalists (TUWJ) condemned the actions of the actor and his fans against media channels.