A suspended Telangana Raj Bhavan employee, who was released on bail in a case of morphing photos of a female colleague, was arrested again last week after he allegedly returned to the office at night and stole a hard drive containing incriminating documents and photos.
The Hyderabad Police on Tuesday said that the hard drives taken away by the accused, T Srinivas, 45, a suspended IT hardware engineer, contained no confidential or important files from the Raj Bhavan, the Telangana governor’s official residence. The police added that the hard drives were removed from Srinivas’s personal desktop computer, which allegedly contained doctored images of a woman.
“Today, it is observed that the reports suggest that outsiders came and stole from the Raj Bhavan; that documents containing important matters related to the Raj Bhavan were also lost, are false,” S Mohan Kumar, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Panjagutta, said.
Earlier, on May 10, a female employee at the Raj Bhavan had reported that her photos had been morphed and sent to her colleague, Srinivas, who then informed her of the incident. A case was filed, and during the probe, Srinivas himself was identified as the alleged culprit. He was arrested on May 12 but was later released on bail.
The Raj Bhavan suspended Srinivas.
On May 15, when IT manager N Rakesh and network engineer Sriram entered Room No 104 at the Raj Bhavan office. They found a computer with a blue screen and a swapped hard disk. Their suspicions led them to review CCTV footage, which showed Srinivas — wearing a helmet — entering the premises around 10.11 pm on May 14.
He allegedly removed the hard drive from the computer he had been using. Consequently, on May 14, 2025, the Raj Bhavan IT manager filed a complaint, leading to another case being registered. Srinivas was interrogated, the hard disk was recovered, and he was re-arrested on May 15, 2025, and sent back to remand. The hard disk reportedly contained licensed software, official documents, user credentials, and IT-related inspection reports.
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