A 24-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with a threat message targeting Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, which said he would be murdered “like Baba Siddique” if he did not step down from the post within 10 days.
Mumbai Police arrested Fatima Khan after an investigation revealed that the message was sent from her number. Police sources said Ms Khan is highly qualified and has been suffering from mental health issues. The woman, it is learnt, holds a BSc degree in Information Technology, and lives in Thane near Mumbai with her family. Her father is into the timber business, sources said.
This comes after the Mumbai Traffic Police control room received a death threat against Yogi Adityanath. A WhatsApp helpline number of the control room received a message from an unknown number that said if Yogi Adiyanath did not resign in 10 days, he would be “killed like Baba Siddique”.
The latest threat message comes amid a wave of death threats received by cops in Mumbai over the past several weeks. Most of these targeted Salman Khan and threatened that the actor would be killed unless he paid a ransom. Against the backdrop of the firing outside the actor’s residence earlier this year, the cops tracked down senders of these messages and took them into custody. They include a vegetable seller from Jamshedpur and a tattoo artist from Noida. Mumbai Police have taken them into transit remand and are questioning them.
One of these threat messages named Zeeshan Siddique, Bandra MLA and son of Baba Siddique. The former minister was shot dead near his son’s office on October 12. Jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang has claimed responsibility for the murder.
The murdered politician was known to be close to Salman Khan, who has in the past received death threats from the Bishnoi gang, apparently due to his involvement in the blackbuck hunting case in Rajasthan during the shooting of Hum Saath Saath Hain. The Lawrence Bishnoi gang was also found to be behind the firing outside Salman Khan’s home in April. The actor’s security has been beefed up after the firing outside and death threats.
