Police on Sunday arrested a 39-year-old Indore-based ‘poet’ who allegedly threatened to kill poet-politician Kumar Vishwas.
The arrest was made on the basis of an FIR lodged at the Indirapuram police station on November 18 over a complaint by Vishwas’s manager Praveen Pandey.
According to the FIR, the suspect Lokesh Shukla, who lives in Indore’s Sudama Nagar area, had sent multiple e-mails to Vishwas over the last few days.
Shukla had also allegedly made objectionable comments on Lord Ram and warned Vishwas against using the deity’s name in his public programmes, according to the FIR.
In the emails, the suspect had also drawn a parallel between Vishwas and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, lashing out at the poet over his political acumen. Incidentally, Vishwas is a former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader.
In one of the emails, Shukla also threatened to kill Vishwas, according to the FIR.
The FIR was lodged under Section 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66F (cyber terrorism) of the Information Technology (IT) Act,” said Devpal Singh Pundir, in-charge of Indirapuram police station.
“The police took help of electronic surveillance and the cyber team was also pressed into the job. Eventually the IP address of the e-mail sender was traced and the location tracked to Indore in Madhya Pradesh,” Pundir said.
Pundir added that once the location was identified, a police team was sent there and the suspect picked up and brought to Ghaziabad for questioning on Saturday. After the probe, he was arrested on Sunday.