BSP MLA gets Rs 1 crore ransom email, with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's photo attached

LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Umashankar Singh has claimed that he has received an email demanding Rs 1 crore ransom from the underworld. The mail, he said, has a photo of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim attached.

The BSP MLA has claimed that he has received the threat that if he fails to give the money, he will be killed. He added that along with an email, he has also got a message with the same demand.  

He has filed a complaint in this regard in the Gomti Nagar police station. The police have lodged an FIR an investigation into the case has been initiated. 

Earlier in May, over a dozen Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs had complained of getting threat calls from underworld demanding a ransom of Rs 10 lakh. 

The Uttar Pradesh Police, on the directions of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, had set up a special investigation team to probe the phone messages that threatened death to family members of the BJP MLAs. The extortion threats were issued in the name of a gangster who once worked with Dawood.

Taking a strong note of the threats, Adityanath had directed the special task force and the anti-terrorist squad to act. 

The MLAs had complained that they got text and WhatsApp messages asking them to pay Rs 10 lakh or their families will be eliminated within three days. ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said there were reports that a journalist in Bhopal and some people in Delhi and Rajasthan had also got similar messages.

The calls were made from a landline number registered in Texas (US) which has a WhatsApp facility. Kumar said the police had obtained the IP address being used for sending out messages to the MLAs.

The MLAs who got the messages in May were Veer Vikram Singh (Meeranpur Katra in Shahjahanpur), Manvendra Singh (Dadraul in Shahjahanpur), Prem Prakash Pandey (Tarabganj in Gonda), Vinay Kumar Dwivedi (Mehnam in Gonda), Vinod Katiyar (Bhognipur in Kanpur), Shahshank Trivedi (Mahauli in Sitapur) and Anita Rajput (Debai in Bulandshahr).

ADG Kumar said the messages are being issued in the name of a gangster who had issued such threats to film personalities in the 1990s. He was once with Dawood Ibrahim but the two later fell out. "In 1998, he shifted to Bahrain and was carrying out his operations from there. In the past 10 years, there has been no report of his activities in India but he is on the radar of the intelligence agencies," Kumar had said.