Our source, who is a also a close friend of the accused, informed us that Mohammed Ashraf's ambition in his life was to stalk celebrities, take their candid pictures and sell them to newspapers, tabloids or news channels. As a freelance lensman, he had independently stalked several Telegu movie stars and taken their candid pictures. But due to grainy quality of his snaps and out-of-focus shots, his pictures as well as job applications for the post of a photo-journalist were rejected by every local newspaper and television news channel.
According to our source, Ashraf was very frustrated with his failure to sell his photographs to newspapers or get a respectable job as a photojournalist and decided that his only chance to make some headway in his ambition to join thetribe of paparazzi was to get spicy shots of tennis superstar, Sania Mirza. He reckoned that tabloids would consider sensational, spicy pictures of Sania Mirza as a scoop worthy of front-page reportage and would snap them up without a second thought.Ashraf wanted to take Sania-watching by media to its next logical level. From sneaky pictures of Sania’s exposed navel or her underpants while stretching for a half-volley during a tennis match, he desired to become the one who would take Sania-watching to its next immediate level – sneaky pictures of Sania Mirza with her male friends, cavorting with her boyfriends or semi-naked in a swimming pool.
But somewhere down the road, in the middle of stalking Sania Mirza for candid photo-shots, he fell in love with her and began stalking her for personal and not professional reasons, which eventually led to his downfall and subsequent arrest.
Our source also informed us that the local media barons who were aware of his dream of becoming a professional member of paparazzi have heavily bribed Andhra cops to ensure that they pursue only the ‘love’ angle and not let his professional reasons for stalking the tennis star be revealed to the world at large.
