Kochi Police arrested an engineering student on Friday for sending an email to president Pratibha Patil
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kochi Police arrested an engineering student on Friday for sending an email to president Pratibha Patil, threatening to kill Congress president Sonia Gandhi and trigger blasts in four cities.
After cracking the case within 24 hours of being intimated by their Delhi counterparts, Kochi Police said they wanted to send a strong message to such pranksters.
The menacing mail was sent to presidentofindia.nic.in at 2.50 pm on October 24, they said.
“The header of the email was traced to Kochi and the case was forwarded to the DGP’s office in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday evening,” commissioner Manoj Abraham told reporters.
The mail, which had the sender’s name as Rahmatullah Barkat, said Sonia would be assassinated before November 14. It also forecast major blasts in Delhi, Kochi and two other cities. The mail was also sent to the directors of Raw and IB. “The mail was traced to a Reliance Webworld in Palarivattam, after which we rounded up four-five men. A records crosscheck and we were able to zero in on the suspect,” Abraham said.
The police identified the accused as Arun Surya aka Kannan, 23, who is pursuing a BTech degree at the Cochin University of Science & Technology. “He had some problems with a girl, similar to another youth who had sent a mail threatening to murder the prime minister two years ago. He had given the girl’s address,” Abraham said.
“The boy did it on the spurt of the moment. He doesn’t have any terrorist motive or criminal background. But we want to create awareness among people on such pranks. We get many fake threats. No matter how an offender tries to hide his identity, digital evidence will be there,” he added.
The police said Arun opted for the name Rahmatullah Barkat, a Koranic phrase meaning ‘Let all be good’, to give an Islamic hue to the threat. He has been charged with impersonation and creation of false identity under the IT Act.
In October 2006, during prime minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Kerala, the police were kept on tenterhooks after the home secretary received a mail threatening to kill him. The police nabbed Akbar Raj, a computer hardware instructor in Kochi, who was depressed after a love failure.
s_don@dnaindia.net
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