Rippling co-founder Prasanna Sankar has alleged harassment at the hands of Chennai police over a false case of child abduction. He chronicled his experience in an X (formerly Twitter) thread, saying it all started after he found out about his wife’s infidelity and initiated divorce proceedings.
In the conversation, Sankar posted, “Dhivya, were married for 10 years and we have a 9-year-old son. Recently our marriage collapsed after I found that she was cheating on me, with someone named Anoop for 6+ mos.” Then Sankar sought divorce, and he accuses his wife not being satisfied with the conditions so she made false complaints against him.
After that, we were discussing the conditions of how many million dollars I had to pay her as part of our divorce. She was not content and chose to instead lodge a bogus police complaint against me claiming I had hit her,” Sankar alleged.
He also claimed, “Later, she made additional false complaints that I raped her (1 mo after the supposed rape). That I distributed her naked videos, etc. Singapore police have investigated these claims, deemed them unfounded, and cleared me of all charges.”
Divorce Battles and Child Abduction Case
Sankar said that his wife filed for divorce in the US while he filed for it in India, citing that her reason was to demand “more money from the divorce.” He also blamed her for taking their child to the US as an attempt to bolster her divorce proceeding.
I registered a case of international child abduction in the US. And the court ruled in my favour and wanted the child returned,” he narrated. Later, Sankar and his wife entered an MoU in Chennai, in which he undertook to give her Rs 9 crore and Rs 4.3 lakh as monthly alimony, along with joint custody.”.
But he claimed his wife breached the MoU, saying it was not valid and threatening to return to the US to obtain a divorce. Sankar claimed, “she wants more and will go to the US again to file a divorce.”
Accusations and Police Harassment
When Sankar shifted to court for compliance, his wife charged him with kidnapping their child. Sankar retorted by stating, “I send the police my version immediately along with my lawyers and state that the child was voluntarily surrendered. And the child is also content with me and show him on a video call. And that the issues are pending in court. Hence cops shouldn’t intervene.”
Notwithstanding this, he asserts that the police started harassing his friends and family. “They kept bothering my friend, Gokul, who assisted in picking up the child telling him he’d be made the prime accused if he doesn’t find me,” Sankar said.
He ended by stating, “On Monday, I will be filing a ‘don’t harass’ for me in courts and taking matters through the court system. Meanwhile, my entire family is out of the state, hiding from the TN cops.”
About Prasanna Sankar
Prasanna Sankar, whose name is Prasanna Sankaranarayanan, is a Singapore-based Indian-origin entrepreneur. He was brought up and born in Chennai and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli. Sankar explained, “I used to participate in lots of programming contests: ranked #1 in India at TopCoder during college. 2x Google Code Jam world finalist. 2x ACM ICPC world finalist.”
Sankar is the co-founder of Rippling, a workforce management software firm worth around $10 billion. Sankar co-founded Rippling with Parker Conrad in 2016. Before that, Sankar was at Zenefits, a SaaS firm founded by Conrad, and co-founded LikeALittle, a campus social network where he was Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Earlier in his professional life, he was at large tech firms such as Google and Microsoft Canada.
