With ruling BJP legislators running to police stations seeking protection from an unknown extortionist sending threatening messages on Whattsapp, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took serious note of the incident on Wednesday morning.
Yogi directed DGP, OP Singh to take the help of both Special Task Force (STF) and Anti-Terrorists Squad (ATS), identify the miscreants and drop the net on them at the earliest. The CM also asked him MlAs that they should not feel threatened as the police would soon nab the culprits.
later, the DGP formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under IG of Special Task Force (STF) Amitabh Yash and directed him to probe the threats received by about a dozen MlAs mostly from the ruling party.
The threats were reportedly issued in the name of a gangster Ali Budesh Bhai from Dubai, who once worked with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
While some MlAs personally met senior officers of respective districts and informed them about the threats, others also made written complaints and registered cases in lucknow, along with Shahjahenpur, Gonda, Bulundhshahr, Ghaziabad etc.
The MlAs got text and WhatsApp messages in which they were instructed to pay Rs 10 lakh or face the possibility of their family memberds and dear ones being eliminated within three days.
ADG (law and Order) Anand Kumar said in lucknow on Wednesday that there were reports that a journalist in Bhopal and some people in Delhi and Rajasthan also got similar messages. He said that the three-member SIT set up under IG of Special Task Force includes Additional SP of Anti Terrorist Squad, Jogendra and Addl SP (STF) Treveni Singh.
"Prima facie, it appears to be more of a planned conspiracy to create panic and draw attention. These calls were made from a landline number registered in Texas (United States) which perhaps has a WhatsApp facility. The police has obtained the IP address used for sending out messages to the MlAs and the culprit/s will soon be identified.
ADG Anand Kumar further said, "The messages issued in the name of Ali Budesh were similar to some sent to film personalities in the 1990s. Ali was once with Dawood but the two later fell out. In 1998, Ali shifted to Bahrain to carry out his operations. In the past decade, there has been no report of his activities in India but he has been on the radar of Intelligence agencies."
The MlAs who got threats include Sakendra Pratap Verma (Fatehpur Kursi in Barabanki), Raknikant Mani Tripathi (Kushinagar), Veer Vikram Singh (Meeranpur Katra in Shahjahanpur), lokendra Pratap Singh (lakhimpur Kheri), Shyam Bihari lal (Bareilly), Neeraj Bora (lucknow), Manvendra Singh (Dadraul, Shahjahanpur), Prem Prakash Pandey (Tarabganj, Gonda), Vinay Kumar Dwivedi (Mehnam, Gonda), Vinod Katiyar (Bhognipur, Kanpur), Shahshank Trivedi (Mahauli, Sitapur), Anita lodhi (Debai, Bulandshahr) etc.