'Apologise or pay Rs 5 crore': Salman Khan gets another threat; suspect tracked down in Karnataka

Mumbai: Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has received a fresh threat along with a demand of Rs 5 crore from a person claiming to be the brother of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, police officials said on Tuesday.

A suspect was tracked down at Hubballi in Karnataka and a police team has reached there though no arrest has been made yet, they said. The threat message, which also asked Khan to apologise apparently over the 1998 blackbuck poaching incident, was received on the WhatsApp helpline of the Mumbai traffic police control room located in Worli late Monday night, an official said.

The message sender claimed he is the brother of Lawrence Bishnoi, he said. "If Salman Khan wants to stay alive, he should go to our (Bishnoi community) temple and apologise or pay Rs 5 crore. If he does not do so, we will kill him; our gang is still active," the message said.

A case was registered at Worli Police Station, and Khan's security was also beefed up, the official said. Worli Police tracked the sender of the message to Hubballi.

A team was sent to the southern state which zeroed in on a 35-year-old man, a welder by profession, he said. The man is suspected to have sent the threat message, and the police team was questioning him though he has not been detained or arrested yet, the official added. Salman Khan has received similar threats earlier.

On October 29, a man sent a threat message to the same traffic police helpline, threatening to kill Khan and city NCP leader Zeeshan Siddique if they failed to pay Rs 2 crore. The sender warned that the two will meet the same fate as former state minister Baba Siddique, Zeeshan's father. Baba Siddique was shot dead by three gunmen in Bandra area of Mumbai on October 12.

On October 30, a resident of Bandra (West), an upscale area where Khan also lives, was arrested in connection with the threat. Earlier in October, the helpline desk had received a threat message demanding Rs 5 crore from the actor.

The police subsequently arrested a man from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand. City police also arrested a man from Noida in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly issuing a death threat to Khan and Zeeshan Siddique.

Notably, Khan had earlier received death threats from the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. While Bishnoi himself is lodged in Ahmedabad's Sabarmati jail in cases including attempted murder and extortion, suspected members of his gang opened fire outside the actor's Bandra home in April.

Weeks after that, Navi Mumbai Police claimed to have uncovered a plot by the Bishnoi gang to kill Khan while on his way to his farmhouse at Panvel near Mumbai.