MUMBAI: The Mumbai police’s crime branch on Wednesday arrested a 30-year-old unemployed engineer in Bengaluru for allegedly sending extortion threats to several Bollywood actors, including Ayushmann Khurrana and Tusshar Kapoor, while posing as an associate of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.
Deputy commissioner of police (crime branch) Rajtilak Roushan confirmed the arrest and said Mishra would be brought to Mumbai after the police obtained a transit remand from a court in Bengaluru. “After receiving the threat message, with the sender claiming to be a Lawrence Bishnoi aide and demanding money, Khurrana informed the police. The police traced the sender’s IP address to Bengaluru and apprehended Mishra with the help of the local police. The police will now seek the help of cyber forensic experts to retrieve the deleted messages, the officer added. Kapoor alerted the police, who sent the recording for forensic analysis. However, investigators found that the voice did not match the samples of Boxer available in their records. They suspected the recording could have been made by someone else seeking to exploit the panic created by the Bishnoi gang.
A case was registered against him under section 308 (attempt to commit extortion) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), based on a complaint lodged by Khurrana. The accused allegedly used the auto-delete feature on social media to make the threatening messages disappear 24 hours after they were sent.
The crime branch formed a team and began tracing the sender,” said deputy commissioner of police Navnath Dhavale. Mishra, who hails from Bihar and has a BTech degree, was learning Python, a programming language, in Bengaluru, a police officer said.
The crime branch traced Mishra after Khurrana received a threatening message from him on Instagram earlier this week.
