The Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested a budding song writer for sending threat messages to Bollywood actor Salman Khan and demanding Rs 5 crore from him in the name of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.
The accused has been identified as Sohail Pasha, who has been arrested from Raichur in Karnataka. Pasha had allegedly called the Mumbai Traffic Police control number on November 7 and claimed himself to be a member of the Bishnoi gang. He demanded a ransom of Rs 5 crore and threatened to kill Salman Khan.
Sohel Pasha is also the lyricist of a song "Main Sikandar Hun" in Salman Khan's upcoming film. According to the police, Sohail Pasha wanted the song written by him to get famous and used this ploy for the purpose.
The WhatsApp helpline of Mumbai traffic police on November 7 received multiple messages stating that the sender was a member of the Bishnoi gang, and Salman Khan would be killed if he did not pay Rs 5 crore.
The threat message also stated that the writer of the song Main Sikandar Hun would also be killed. The crime branch of Mumbai Police tracked down the mobile number from which the messages had come to Raichur.
Accordingly, a team was sent to Karnataka and Vyankatesh Narayan, who owned the number, was interrogated. However, Narayan's mobile phone had no Internet facility and the cops found that his phone had received a WhatsApp installation OTP.
Narayan told police that on November 3, a stranger approached him in a marketplace and asked if he could have Narayan's phone for making a call.
Upon investigation, it was revealed that the man had installed WhatsApp on his own mobile by using Narayan's mobile number to obtain an OTP.
The crime branch team then zeroed in on Pasha at Manavi village near Raichur.He turned out to be the writer of Main Sikandar Hun song mentioned in the threat, the official said, adding that he wanted to make the song famous and hence used this ploy of including it in a threat message to a famous person.
Pasha was brought to Mumbai and handed over to Worli police for further probe, the official said. The traffic police helpline has received at least four threat messages for Salman Khan in the recent months.