Independent MP Pappu Yadav from Bihar
Credit: PTI Photo
Purnea (Bihar): Bihar Police on Saturday claimed to have arrested from the national capital a person who had recently made a threatening call to Independent MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, posing as an associate of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.
According to a statement issued by the police in Purnea, Yadav's parliamentary constituency, a case was registered on the basis of reports surfacing in social and mainstream media and the caller was identified as Delhi resident Mahesh Pandey.
Yadav had shot off letters to Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, pleading for enhanced security, after having received the call "from a Dubai number".
The police, however, made it clear that it has so far found "no links with Lawrence Bishnoi gang" of Pandey, who has been arrested and was being interrogated.
According to the police, Pandey has confessed to have contacted the MP, through WhatsApp, using a SIM card he had borrowed from his wife's sister who lives in the UAE.
According to the police, Pandey played the prank on Yadav, whose number he found out from Google, upon coming across reports of the MP's outbursts against Bishnoi soon after the assassination of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddiqui.
Notably, Yadav had come out with a social media post stating that he could "finish off within 24 hours" the gang of Bishnoi, suspected to be behind the killing "if permitted by law" to do so.
The mobile set from which Pandey had made the call, as also the SIM card, have been seized by police.