telangana

Updated: Oct 30, 2019 05:29 IST

A young Indian Police Service officer has been accused of harassment and criminal intimidation by his wife who has alleged that the 28-year-old had been trying to force her to divorce her, police said.

The woman, 28, told the police that she had been in a relationship with the police officer Kokkanti Maheswara Reddy since their college days and got married in February last year. He had graduated in computer science and engineering before doing his masters from IIT Bombay.

But relations between the couple deteriorated this year, she alleged, after Maheswara Reddy cleared the prestigious civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. He was ranked 126 in the merit list.

“Reddy changed his mind after he cleared the civil services examination conducted by UPSC this year and secured 126th rank,” Jawaharnagar police inspector P Bhikshapathi Rao said, quoting wife Bhavana’s complaint.

“Ever since he got selected for the Indian Police Service, he started forcing me to give divorce to him, so that he could marry another woman,” Bhavana said.

Reddy could not be reached, as he is currently undergoing foundation training at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie.

Bhavana said her husband hadn’t told his parents about the marriage all along. “He used to dodge the issue whenever I asked him to tell his parents about the marriage. After he got selected to the IPS, he said that his parents were bringing marriage alliances for him and I was shocked,” Bhavana, who filed her first complaint against the IPS trainee officer in August, said.

She opened her first Twitter account around the same time. When the police did not act on her complaints for a few weeks, she started putting out her allegations on social media to draw attention.

After the Rachakonda police in Hyderabad on Monday booked a case against a trainee IPS officer, Rachakonda Police commissioner Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat denied that the police hadn’t acted on time.

The law will take its own course, the police commissioner tweeted, pointing the police were permitted to hold three counselling sessions in matrimonial cases before registering the FIR. “Parties were called & given reconciliation time. But no success,” the police chief tweeted.

“A case has been booked against Reddy under Sections 498 A (Harassment), 323 and 506 (criminal intimidation) of Indian Penal Code and also under SC, ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act,” Bhikshapathi Rao said.