Davanagere man arrested for writing threat letter to writers

BENGALURU/DAVANAGERE: The CCB police have arrested a man from Davangere in connection with the case of an anonymous threat letter to Kannada writers, intellectuals, progressive thinkers. He was produced before a court which remanded him to police custody for 13 days.

The arrested accused was Shivaji Rao Jadhav, the convener of a Hindu outfit in Davanagere. Crime Branch ACP Naveen Kulkarni and team arrested the accused from Davanagere after finding out that he had been writing death threats for two years.

The accused Jadhav’s letters said, “Why not kill you?” “Why not kill you by shooting?” He used to write the letter saying, “…You were counting your last days”. Each threat letter had the same handwriting and were posted from Davangere itself.

As many as seven FIRs were registered across the state, including Bengaluru, regarding the anonymous letters. Later the state government transferred the case to the CCB.

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) test confirmed that the death threats were written with the handwriting. The letters came from a Davanagere source, but were posted in different taluks, as revealed by the investigation.

The government had taken the case seriously in view of more than 15 writers including Prof K Marulasiddappa, Prof S G Siddaramaiah, Banjagere Jayaprakash, Vasundhara Bhupathi, Kum Veerabhadrappa receiving threatening letters for a year.

Home Minister G Parameshwara said that he has given instructions to the DG&IGP and Bengaluru City Police Commissioner to provide adequate police security to the writers.

The accused Shivaji Rao Jadhav told the CCB police that he was writing the letter when the writers or intellectuals insulted Hindu religion. They would quieten down after he wrote the letters and threatened them, he revealed.

Jadhav admitting to his crime and said, “I could not find any other way to silence the writers. Writing a threatening  letter to keep them quiet was the only intention behind it. They would keep quiet after they received my letter, and they stopped speaking against Hinduism. I realised this in 2008 itself”.

“In 2008, I wrote a letter to U R Ananthamurthy, K S Bhagawan, and threatened him. They were also kept quiet after the letter. In recent times, the number of such writers has increased and they are criticising Hinduism. Hence, I wrote the letters to scare them. If I had the power, another assassination would have happened like Gauri Lankesh, and they would stop anti-Hindu remarks immediately”, said Jadhav.

The accused has studied up to Class 8 and was working in a printing press. He developed much anger towards writers and could not tolerate if they talked about against Hinduism and he wanted to shut their mouth, the police said.