Budding K'taka songwriter tries to extort Rs 5 cr from Salman; held

The Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested a budding songwriter for allegedly sending threat messages to Bollywood actor Salman Khan and demanding Rs 5 crore from him in the name of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, an official said.

Sohail Pasha, held from Raichur in Karnataka, wanted a song written by him to become famous and used this ploy for the purpose, the police claimed.

The WhatsApp helpline of Mumbai traffic police on November 7 received multiple messages stating that the sender was a member of the Bishnoi gang, and Salman Khan would be killed if he did not pay Rs 5 crore.

They would also kill the writer of the song Main Sikandar Hun, the sender warned.

The crime branch of the Mumbai police tracked down the mobile number from which the messages had come to Raichur.

Accordingly, a team was sent to Karnataka and Vyankatesh Narayan, who owned the number, was interrogated, the official said.

But Narayan's mobile phone had no Internet facility, he said.

The police then found that his phone had received a WhatsApp installation OTP.

Narayan told police that on November 3, a stranger approached him in a marketplace and asked if he could have Narayan's phone to make a call.

The probe revealed that the man had installed WhatsApp on his own mobile by using Narayan's mobile number to obtain an OTP, the official said.

The crime branch team then zeroed in on Pasha at Manavi village near Raichur. He turned out to be the writer of Main Sikandar Hun song mentioned in the threat, the official said, adding that he wanted to make the song famous and hence used this ploy of including it in a threat message to a famous person.

Pasha was brought to Mumbai and handed over to the Worli police for further probe, the official said.

The traffic police helpline has received at least four threat messages for Salman Khan in recent months.