Bangalore: Award-winning Sandalwood actor Radhika Pandit faced a piquant situation last week when she learnt that her Vodafone mobile’s subscriber identity module (SIM) had been hacked.
It soon came to light that the hacker kept sending distress calls on her behalf, asking to send money. Actor Ramya and a leading film magazine were among the recipients.
During the audio release function of the movie “Dilwala” in which Radhika appears, actor Kishan who was among the audience was surprised to receive a message from her mobile, while she was on stage attentively listening to the proceedings. When he called back to ask the person where Radhika was, he replied that she was away shooting a movie.
This gave the first hint. Radhika was alerted. But by then hundreds of persons might have received messages which were not in her interest. She told that she would soon file a complaint to the police, since she found that the SIM had been giving some problems for about a week’s time. She thought she would get it set right after her busy schedule, without realizing that the SIM had been hacked.
When her colleagues alerted her about it, she posted in the Facebook, “You guys are right…My phone was hacked, what can we call such masterminds? Never mind. It is under control now.”
“Strange situation… My phone Sim just stopped working two days ago. Didn’t pay much attention, because I thought I could live without my phone for sometime till it is fixed. Until my dad received calls saying many people are receiving strange messages from my number! Shocking.”
Based on her complaint, city north DCP Sandeep Patil constituted a team led by Subrahmanyanagar inspector G U Somegowda and SI V T Srinivas. Within two days, they arrested one Abhishek, hailing from Kolar and employed at a call centre in the city.
Abhishek had also worked as a spot boy while shooting for a serial called “Nandagokula” where he got to be acquainted with her.
He had also got friendly with a female employee of Vodafone network through Internet chatting. He succeeded in fooling her that he was a relative of Radhika Pandit. He also told that Radhika’s handset had been stolen and requested her to connect him to the number. She complied with his request in good faith.
This enabled Abhishek to send text messages to all the contacts on the handset. He has confessed to the police that he did all that just for fun.
Radhika hails from a Konkani-speaking family from Shirali in Uttar Kannada. Starting with the small screen, she debuted into Sandalwood with “Moggina Manasu” in 2008. She won Filmfare Award for Best Actress for three years in a row, 2008, 2009 and 2010, besides the Innovative Award for Best Award for “Olave Jeevana Lekkachara “in 2009. She has also won 2011 Big Award for Most Entertaining Actress and 2011 Suvarna Film Award, both for her role in “Krishnan Love Story”.
