Nagpur: Phones, sims used by Pujari to threaten Union minister Nitin Gadkari traced from jail in Belagavi

An official said on Friday that Nagpur police recovered two mobile phones and as many sim cards from a jail in Karnataka’s Belagavi, days after a person made threat calls to Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s office here, claiming himself as a jail inmate.

Three phone calls were made to the BJP leader’s public relations office in Nagpur on March 21. The caller, identified as Jayesh Pujari, alias Jayesh Kantha, demanded Rs 10 crore and threatened to hurt the minister if it was not paid.

As part of their investigation, the local police with the help of their Belagavi counterparts searched the premises of Hindalga Central Jail in the Karnataka city where a man named Jayesh Pujari is serving a life sentence, said Nagpur police chief Amitesh Kumar.

During the search, two mobile phones and two sim cards were recovered from the jail premises, he said.

The official said they will seek Pujari’s remand for his custodial interrogation as his name had also been used to make similar calls to the minister’s office demanding Rs 100 crore in January.

The Nagpur police had then questioned Pujari but he had denied having any role in the calls, said an official had said then.

In the latest set of calls, the caller demanded that the amount of Rs 10 crore be paid through UPI (Unified Payments Interface) to one Razia, who is an event manager from Mangalore and is believed to be the girlfriend of an inmate at the Belagavi jail, said Kumar.