City Police on Monday arrested three persons, including a woman, for allegedly sending "highly offensive and derogatory" emails to a senior IAS officer that were also forwarded to various government offices for "defaming" the bureaucrat and his wife, who is also an IAS officer.

The complainant A Vidyasagar, Principal Secretary (Tribal Welfare) in the Social Welfare Department, in his complaint to the Cyber Crime Police -- a wing in Hyderabad Police, said that he was receiving emails from different email IDs which tried to malign his and his wife's image.

During the course of investigation police traced the Internet Protocol address of the email ID '[email protected]' through which such mails were generated. After obtaining the IP logs of the mail ID, police succeeded in nabbing the accused Aenugula Siva Prasad, a suspended Civil Engineer in the Irrigation Department, a senior police officer said.

One woman identified as Vatsala, who claimed to having a relationship with Vidyasagar, conspired along with Siva Prasad and one advocate Venkata Ramana to intimidate and extort money from the IAS officer and in pursuance of their conspiracy Siva Prasad generated the hate emails with misleading content and forwarded it to various government offices, the senior police officer explained.

"The intention is nothing but character assassination and to malign the names of the IAS officers amongst their service colleagues and other persons in public life," the police officer added.

Siva Prasad is facing two criminal cases at Prodduturu in Kadapa district and one case at Kurnool two town where he demanded Rs 25 lakhs from one IFS officer, besides two cases in Cyber Crime police here for other offences.