The person who was allegedly writing threat letters to several writers in the State from April 2022 has finally been arrested.
Sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB), which has been entrusted with the probe into the case recently, arrested Shivaji Rao Jadhav, 41, from Davanagere. The arrested is the co-convenor of a Hindutva outfit for the Davanagere district. A class 8 dropout, he works at a printing press. He has two previous cases, including a molestation case and a preventive arrest.
“We have concrete evidence that it is the same individual who has written all the threat letters to writers,” B. Dayananda, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner, said. Sources said an earlier investigation, which zeroed in on the wrong person in May 2023, had mounted CCTV surveillance at many post boxes from which these threat letters were posted across four districts. The accused was identified from this surveillance footage, sources said.
He has been arrested and taken into 13 days police custody. “The accused has confessed to us in custody that he wrote all those threat letters to writers and claimed he wrote them those letters as he considered them to be “anti-Hindu”. He also claimed most of these writers who were speaking against “Hindu Dharma” had stopped doing so following his letter campaign,” a senior official involved in the probe said.
Several writers — including Kum. Veerabhadrappa, Banjagere Jayaprakash, Vasundhara Bhupati, B.T. Lalitha Nayak, and B.L. Venu — had been receiving letters from April 2022 threatening to kill them. All the letters had the same handwriting and were signed “Sahishnu Hindu”. They threatened to kill 61 writers, signatories to an open letter to then Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai demanding he put a break to the relentless communal campaign in the state in 2022.
Following a report in The Hindu on police inaction over threat letters on July 12, 2022, the BJP government appointed Superintendent of Police, Ramanagara, as the nodal officer for the probe. This investigation mounted surveillance and did much groundwork, but ended up detaining the wrong person in May 2023, evident in how threat letters continued with appeals to release the youth who was detained. As writers approached the State government again seeking fresh probes, it was handed over to CCB, Bengaluru on August 24, 2023.
Accused a habitual threat letter writer
The Bengaluru police said the accused claimed to have written threat letters to several other writers as well before this campaign. “In custody, the accused has claimed he started writing threat letters to liberal writers as far back as 2008, with a letter to U.R. Ananthamurthy. He claims to have written several threat letters since then to writers including Prof. K.S. Bhagwan and S.G. Siddaramaiah,” a senior official said.
However, the accused’s confession in police custody is not admissible in court as evidence. “We have corroborative evidence as his mobile tower locations have been matched with the date and place of these letters being posted. We have CCTV footage, and the biggest evidence will be the hand-written letters. We have collected his accepted writing samples which will be forensically matched with the letters,” a senior official said.
Is he part of a larger plot?
Commissioner Mr. Dayananda said the probe was on to ascertain whether he was a lone-wolf acting out alone or there were others involved in this threat letter campaign. “Whether there were any plans to act out on his threats, whether he had such capability is also under probe,” he said. His associations with organisations and individuals are being probed, sources said.
Writers welcome the arrest
Writer Kum. Veerabhadrappa, who has received 19 threat letters from “Sahishnu Hindu,” said he was happy that the letter writer has been arrested. “Though I had not taken his letters seriously, my family members were really scared. His arrest has brought some relief to them. The state government has kept its word and apprehended him at the earliest. Now writers feel a bit safe under this regime,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said on social media that the government would take the case to its logical conclusion and hold any individual or organisation part of this plot. “Our government is committed to upholding the freedom of expression of everyone. We have zero tolerance towards any forces that try to silence pro-people voices,” he posted on social media on Saturday.
