Actress’ phone number circulating online and flashed on TV news channel brings nightmare to clerk; The two phone numbers differ by just a digit; Sagar Surve says he has blocked 150 numbers and switched off his phone
Vallabh Ozarkar (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 12, 2020)

Mistaken for actress Rhea Chakraborty, a 32-year-old clerical staffer of an educational institute has been receiving harassing and abusive calls for a week. The confusion stems from their closely resembling phone numbers. Sagar Surve, a resident of Navi Mumbai, has blocked around 150 crank callers so far and had to even turn off his phone.

Chakraborty has been accused by late actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s family of cheating him of crores and pushing him to take his life. Surve said when the first calls came, “asking for Rhea”, he dismissed them as ‘wrong numbers’. It didn’t even occur to him that they were asking for the actress. But within a day, the frequency of the calls grew, with some callers turning abusive. “I started receiving messages, voice calls and video calls on WhatsApp. People asked me to send them a photograph of myself when I told them that they were mistaken. I tried to ignore the calls, but it only worsened over the next three days,” said Surve. As his confusion grew, a cousin of Surve alerted him that a news TV channel had recklessly flashed Chakraborty’s number while showing Rajput’s call records, and pointed out that her number differed from his by just a digit. That’s when Surve connected the dots, and even contemplated ditching the phone number he has had for a decade.

Around the same time, some of those who dropped him messages revealed that his number has also been circulating online as the actress’ contact number.

“I was completely traumatised and didn’t know what to do,” said Surve, who approached the police on Tuesday. Since he was unwilling to go through the hassle of filing a complaint, the police suggested that he use another phone number for a while. “They sympathised with my predicament and told me to get in touch with them when needed,” he said.

Surve, who is now intermittently using a friend’s phone number, said he has missed calls from his family in Kolhapur, his friends and the office. “I am fed up with this. When will this end?”