Warned off woman, man threatens to bomb Ahmedabad, held

A 34-year-old man has been arrested by the Gujarat police after he allegedly threatened to carry out serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad city on Republic Day, an official said on Tuesday.

The investigation revealed the motive of the accused, identified as Ashish Kumar Dusadh, was to frame a man who had warned Dusadh to stay away from his sister-in-law, the Ahmedabad crime branch said in a release.

As per the probe, it was Dusadh who had written a letter threatening blasts and identified the sender as Om Prakash Paswan against whom he bore a grudge.

Dusadh, who hails from Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, was arrested from Bareja village in Kheda district of Gujarat under Sections 193 (fabricating false evidence), 505(1)(b) (circulating rumour), 606(2) (criminal intimidation), and 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code.

On January 24, the Ahmedabad police commissioner's office received a letter in which the sender threatened to carry out serial bomb blasts, including at the railway station and a bus stand, on Republic Day.

In the hand-written letter, the sender had identified himself as Om Prakash Paswan and also mentioned a phone number, the police said.

A preliminary probe revealed Paswan is a native of Ballia who currently lives with his brothers and other family members in Isanpur area of Ahmedabad.

Since Paswan had already left for Ballia on January 22 via train, the city crime branch sent a team to Ballia and started a further investigation, which unearthed the role of Dusadh, who was nabbed from Bareja village near Ahmedabad, where he works in a textile factory, the police said.

"When Dusadh was working as PRO of a pathology lab in Ballia some time back, Paswan took his brother's wife to that facility for treatment of her kidney stone. When Dusadh started calling her over the phone frequently, Paswan scolded Dusadh and asked him to stay away from her, which angered the accused," said the release.

On January 20, Dusadh came to Ahmedabad from UP and hatched a plan to implicate Paswan in a false case.

He wrote a bomb threat letter and sent it to the office of the city police commissioner via post, it said.

Ahmedabad was rocked by at least 20 bomb blasts on July 26, 2008, which claimed 56 lives and left over 200 injured.