3 arrested for SMS threat to kill Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar

Three persons have been arrested for sending an SMS threatening to kill Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar.

The Chief Minister’s security has been tightened following the threat, presumed to be sent by the banned extremist group CPI (Maoist), to kill Nitish Kumar if two of its top leaders were not freed from jail.

A senior police officer said in Patna, the capital of Bihar, that three persons, whose mobile phone might have been used for sending the threatening SMS, have been taken into custody and that the police are investigating “from all possible angles” to arrive at a “logical conclusion.”

The police said the kill threat – in chaste Hindi – was sent to nearly half a dozen journalists. One of the journalists who received the SMS informed the police.

The SMS, sent from the mobile number 9308670993, read thus: Lal Salam – Aapke CM ka jaan khatre mein hain, agar bachana chahte hain to hamare two neta – Ravi jee and Virendra jee ko release kardo. (Salutations. Your Chief Minister is in danger. If you want to save him, you should free our two leaders, Ravi and Virendra).

Suspected extremists had on Thursday shot dead 16 villagers in Bihar, including 5 children, after they raided a village in Khagaria district.

Reacting to the threat on his life, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna that he was “not scared” and that “competent state agencies” are investigating the matter.

However, the Bihar police are not so cool about the whole affair.

In the past, Maoists have killed two police officers and an officer of the Indian Forest Service (IFS) in Bihar.

In January 2005, K C Surendra Babu, a 1997-batch IPS officer and the Superintendent of Police of Munger, was murdered along with his driver and 4 securitymen in a forest near Bhimbandh, 45 kilometres from Munger.

In 2000, Ajay Singh, the Superintendent of Police of Lohardaga (now in Jharkhand), was done to death by extremists.

And, in 2002, Sanjay Singh, a young officer of the Indian Forest Service, was killed by Naxalites in Rohtas district, where he was working as the Divisional Forest Officer.

While Nitish Kumar is generally seen as having done a good job of bringing law and order back to Bihar, he has recently suffered reverses in the by-elections.