MONDAY, May 19, (News Locale) - The dangers of social networking once again came to the fore after a Gurgaon techie was arrested by police for allegedly posting obscene comments about Sonia Gandhi on Orkut. 

22-year-old Rahul Krishnakumar Vaid who worked for PC Solutions in Gurgaon was arrested by Crime branch after he was found to have posted derogatory messages about Congress Chief Sonia Gandhi on a community called "I hate Soniya Gandhi."

The whole episode was started off when Pune Congress activist Amol Bhokare saw the posting and notified authorities at the Deccan Gymkhana police in December last year.

Police asked Orkut to supply the IP address of the perpetrator and found the message to originate from the email address This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it The police also learned that Vaid had uploaded this message using Internet connections provided by Sify and Bharti Airtel.

Using information provided by the service providers, police zeroed in on Rahul Vaid of Chakarpur in Gurgaon. Vaid was arrested on Friday at his residence and admitted to posting the message. He has been taken into custody till May 21 under section 67 of the IT Act.

Orkut, owned by Internet giant Google, is a popular social networking site. It is estimated that Orkut user in India are the third largest in the world. This is not the first time that Orkut has come under the scanner. In August last year Mumbai police had revealed that a youth was killed by contacts he met on Orkut.

In June a derogatory message about Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray was posted on the site leading to furor that caused party supporters to vandalize Internet cafes in Mumbai.