Lucknow, February 22 The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested a man on Sunday for allegedly issuing a threat to blow up the court complex and the gate of the Police Lines in Jaunpur, according to an official statement.
The accused had sent the threat because the woman he was in love with was to marry a man from Jaunpur, the statement said.
The accused has been identified as Vishal Rajan, a resident of the Azamgarh district. He was arrested from a rented accommodation in Azamgarh.
Five mobile phones, a laptop, two memory cards, four SIM cards, and Rs 21,902 have been seized from his possession, the statement said.
On February 17, the official e-mail of the Jaunpur district judge received a threat from five e-mail IDs. The e-mails were sent using the internet from five different mobile phones and stated that the court complex and the gate of the Police Lines in Jaunpur would be blown up if an amount of Rs 1 lakh was not paid by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister.
A case was registered at Jaunpur's Line Bazar police station under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and the Information Technology (IT) Act.
The ATS identified the suspect, a resident of Bakshapur in Azamgarh's Nizamabad police station area, by thoroughly analyzing the social media activities, VPNs, and proxy e-mail IDs of the users of the mobile phone numbers mentioned in the e-mails.
When a team from the ATS reached the rented accommodation of the accused, five mobile phones and a laptop were found.
Interrogation revealed that the woman, Ranjan, was in love with had gotten engaged to a man from Jaunpur. The accused had created a fake social media account of the man and made an objectionable post from it.
This led to a panchayat meeting between the two parties, and Ranjan was forced to apologize.
In a fit of vengeance, the accused first looked up social media platforms for the mobile phone numbers of all those from the man's side who were involved in the panchayat meeting. He found a pamphlet about a cricket tournament being held in the village that had the phone numbers and names of some of them.
The accused then created fake e-mail IDs using the names of those men, as well as the woman's fiancé, and using their phone numbers, threatened to bomb the court complex and the gate of the Police Lines, the ATS statement said.