Noida man held for giving death threats to Salman, Zeeshan Siddique

The Mumbai police have arrested a 20-year-old man from Noida in Uttar Pradesh for allegedly issuing a death threat to Bollywood actor Salman Khan and Nationalist Congress Party leader Zeeshan Siddique, an official said on Tuesday.

The man was held on Monday, he said.

"The accused initially sent a threatening message on MLA Zeeshan Siddique's helpline number and later made a voice call on it, in which he issued a death threat to Siddique and actor Salman Khan. This took place on Friday," an official of Nirmal Nagar police station in Mumbai said.

A case in this connection was registered on Monday and with the help of technical evidence, the accused was nabbed from Noida. He is being brought to Mumbai for investigation, he added.

The call was made at the Zeeshan's public relations office located in Bandra East, he said.

Jitendra Kumar Singh, inspector in-charge of Sector 39 police station in Noida, said the accused, Taib Ansari, posed as gangster Lawrence Bishnoi's brother and demanded Rs 10 crore extortion money from Salman Khan.

Ansari told the police that he made the threatening call on a phone number picked from the internet -- which was a 'helpline' number issued by Mumbai Police.

Ansari hails from Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh. He was arrested on Monday night from an under-construction house in Sector 92 where he was working as a carpenter, , said.

Singh said Mumbai's Bandra Police contacted Noida Police late Monday night and informed that Lawrence Bishnoi's brother Anmol Bishnoi had threatened Salman Khan. They said the location of the phone was traced to Noida.

Also, Assistant Sub Inspector of Police Bandra Police Rauf Shaikh came to Noida with his team.

Singh said that a joint team of Noida and Mumbai Police raided an under-construction house in Sector 92 and Ansari was arrested from there on charges of threatening and demanding Rs 10 crore extortion money.

He said that the mobile phone used in the incident was recovered from the accused.

Singh said that during the interrogation, the police came to know that Ansari had obtained the number on which he made the threatening call through the internet.

The number on which the accused called and threatened is a 'helpline' number issued by the Mumbai Police, he said, adding the police was interrogating him.

Zeeshan's father, Baba Siddique, 66, a three-time MLA and former state minister, was shot dead outside his son's office in Bandra on October 12.

The Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which claimed responsibility for the NCP leader's killing, citing the politician's close ties with Salman as one of the reasons why he was killed.

The ruling NCP led by Ajit Pawar has fielded Zeeshan from the Bandra East constituency in Mumbai in the next month's assembly elections.

Zeeshan recently mentioned in an interview that after the death of his father, who was also a close friend of actor Salman Khan, the Bollywood actor was extremely worried about his well-being.