Man who wrote threat letter to Kannada liberal writers finally arrested

Sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB), which has entrusted with the probe into the case recently, arrested Shivaji Rao Jadhav, 41, from Davanagere. The arrested is the co-convenor of a hindutva outfit for Davanagere district. The accused is a class 8 drop out, unmarried and works at a printing press. He has two previous cases including a molestation case and a preventive arrest. His father works as a group D employee at the Davanagere City Municipal Corporation. 

We have concrete evidence that it is the same individual who has written all the threat letters to writers,” B. Dayananda, Bengaluru City Police Commissioner said. Sources said that an earlier investigation which zeroed in on the wrong person in May 2023 had mounted CCTV surveillance at many post boxes from which these threat letters were posted from, across four districts. The accused was identified from this surveillance footage, sources said. He has been arrested and taken into 13 days police custody.  

Several writers including Kum. Veerabhadrappa, Banjagere Jayaprakash, Vasundhara Bhupati, B. T. Lalitha Nayak and B. L. Venu had been receiving threat letters from April 2022, threatening to kill them. All the letters had the same handwriting and were signed “Sahishnu Hindu”. All the letters threatened to kill 61 writers, signatories to an open letter to then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai demanding he put a break to the relentless communal campaign in the state in 2022. 

Following a report in The Hindu on police inaction over threat letters on July 12, 2022, BJP government appointed Superintendent of Police, Ramanagara as the nodal officer for the probe. This investigation mounted surveillance and did much ground work, but ended up detaining the wrong person in May 2023, evident in how threat letters continued with appeals to release the youth who was detained. As writers approached the state government again seeking fresh probe, it was handed over to CCB, Bengaluru on August 24, 2023. 

However, the accused’s confession in police custody is not admissible in court as evidence. “We have corroborative evidence as his mobile tower locations have been matched with the date and place of these letters being posted. We have CCTV footage and the biggest evidence will be the hand-written letters. We have collected his accepted writing samples which will be forensically matched with the letters,” a senior official said. His associations with organisations and individuals are being probed, sources said.