Man who sent sms threats to Tharoor jailed

NEW DELHI - A city court Monday sent to judicial custody till April 30 a 27-year-old businessman arrested for sending threatening and lewd sms messages to several politicians, including former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Dig Vinay Singh said: “A judicial custody of 13 days is given for further investigations in this matter.”

Accused Narender Khosla, a manpower supplier, was arrested Friday by Delhi Police’s specialised anti-terror wing, Special Cell.

Khosla and his employee Rohit Kumar, already in judicial custody, used cellphone SIM cards procured in the name of a gym instructor, Manik Verma, for sending threatening messages to politicians.

“The two sent the threatening messages to settle scores with Verma, with whom Khosla had a personal rivalry,” said a senior police officer.

Three mobile phones and fake identity cards were recovered from Khosla, he said.

“On interrogation, Khosla revealed that he had a love affair with a girl whom he wanted to marry but couldn’t as his family was against it. He married another woman. But his former girlfriend started having an affair with Verma,” the officer added.

“When Khosla came to know about this, he became jealous and decided to frame Verma. He gathered Verma’s personal details from different sources, including the Internet, prepared a fake driving licence with the help of one of his employees Rohit Kumar and procured a SIM card in his name,” the officer said.

Nearly 100 text messages were sent to politicians, including Shashi Tharoor, Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Brinda Karat and Congress leaders Rashid Alvi and Sandeep Dikshit in the last fortnight.