Nagpur: A team of Nagpur city police on Wednesday reached Belagavi to investigate threat and ransom calls to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. The police team is likely to interrogate Jayesh Poojari alias Jayesh Kantha lodged in Belgaum jail in Karnataka in this connection.
However, suspecting that Poojari would jump the police custody, the Nagpur Police officials strictly asked its team to not arrest Jayesh Poojari. The cops would likely interrogate Poojari to get the location of the phone that was used by him to make the threat calls to Gadkari.
Poojari, a resident of Mangalore, is lodged in Belgaum jail on charges of extortion and murder. He was sentenced to death by the court. Later, the sentence was converted into life imprisonment. Preliminary probe reveals that Jayesh had made the threat and extortion call to Gadkari’s Public Relations Office in Nagpur in a bid to get out of jail.
Reports say making threat calls is a part of the modus operandi of Jayesh. “The accused may have deliberately made the threat call to Gadkari’s office a second time so that he would be arrested in that case and would be required to be produced before a court. During his court appearance, he would have tried to flee,” reports said, adding Jayesh has a history of absconding from police custody.
As per the records, Poojari, a dreaded goon, had managed to escape from jail in 2016. The Nagpur Police officials suspect that Poojari wanted to be arrested by the police so that he would get one more chance to escape from the police custody.
It may be mentioned that this is the second time when Poojari made threat and extortion calls to Gadkari within three months. He also had made a similar phone call to an Inspector General of Police(IGP) rank police official of Karnataka. On March 21, Poojari demanded Rs 10 crore extortion from Gadkari for not harming him and asked to deposit the amount in the account of one Razia through UPI. Razia, is allegedly the girlfriend of a man who is lodged in the same jail with Poojari.
Police investigation revealed that Razia is unwell and admitted at a hospital. Earlier, Poojari had made threat calls to Gadkari’s public relations office on January 14. He had told the telephone operator that he was a “D-gang member” and demanded Rs 100 crore from the minister.
