A man’s visit to a police station to appear for questioning made him a suspect in a hoax bomb threat, only for the police to later find the real culprit: A prison inmate who allegedly used his mobile phone to send an email threatening to blow up the Bhatkal town in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka.
The accused has been identified as Jithesh Sharma alias Khalid, a man in his 40s, who has about 16 cases in eight states, mainly for allegedly issuing hoax bomb threats.
On July 10, the Bhatkal police station’s official email address received two bomb threats via email. One stated, “We will plant bombs in Bhatkal town”, while the other said, “All the bombs will within 24 hours.”
The police registered a case under Section 351(4) (criminal intimidation committed through anonymous communication or by concealing the identity of the threatener) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and began the probe. The police found that the mobile phone from which the email was sent was active in the Munnar region in Kerala. Using technical leads, the police found the phone user: Kannan Guruswamy, an agent who provides animal feed in the region.
When the police nabbed Guruswamy, he was shocked to realise that he was being taken into custody for sending a bomb threat and told the police that he had no idea of what had happened.
The two emails were sent at 7.22 am and 7.23 am on July 10. Guruswamy told the police that he was at the Munnar police station at that point and had given his mobile phone to a man inside a cell.
Guruswamy said he visited the Munnar police station for questioning regarding a theft case as a thief had claimed to have sold some valuable items to him. While waiting for the police, he claimed to have sat on a chair next to a cell. Guruswamy said a man from the cell approached him and spoke to him in Hindi and English, requesting to use his mobile phone to call his family.
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He said he initially agreed and handed over the phone, but quickly took it back when the man was unable to connect the call. Guruswamy claimed that he later went to the washroom, keeping the phone near the cell.
During the investigation, the police discovered that Sharma had taken Guruswamy’s phone, sent emails, and then returned it.
Sharma, currently an undertrial in the Mysuru central jail, was brought to the Munnar police station in connection with a hoax bomb threat case. He was previously convicted in a similar case in Nainital and served an eight-month prison sentence. Authorities discovered he had been using other people’s phones to send fake bomb threats to police stations nationwide, threatening to blow up various cities.
The Bhatkal police are yet to bring Sharma on a body warrant from the Mysuru police station, and said that he claimed that he was innocent and was falsely implicated in the Nainital case. He allegedly started sending bomb threat emails to various police stations to avenge his conviction in the previous case.
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“The Munnar police have informed us that they have CCTV footage in which Sharma can be seen taking the phone from the cell,” said a police officer.
Sharma faces cases in Delhi, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, and Uttarakhand. In Karnataka, he is accused of sending bomb threat emails to Mysuru, Raichur and Uttara Kannada police stations.
“We are yet to know why he sent a threatening email to the Bhatkal police station and also how quickly he searched for the email IDs online,” a police officer said.