Case against right-wing activist over threat letters to Kannada writer & seer

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The Bengaluru Central Crime Branch (CCB) police have filed three chargesheets for criminal intimidation against a right-wing activist linked to the Hindu Jagaran Vedike for sending threat letters to a writer and a seer in Karnataka.

The three cases in which chargesheets were filed on January 11 at a magistrate’s court are among seven cases taken up for investigating threats issued through letters to prominent writers and thinkers in Karnataka since 2020.

The police are now awaiting state sanction to prosecute the rightwing activist, Shivaji Rao Jadhav, 41, under charges of promoting enmity between different groups under section 153A of the Indian Penal Code in order to file four more chargesheets, sources said.

In the three cases, the Hindu Jagaran Vedike activist has been charged under section 507 of the Indian Penal Code (criminal intimidation).

The police do not need sanction for prosecuting people accused under section 507, unlike section 153 A.

Section 507 entails a jail term of two years, while section 153A involves a jail term of three years and a fine.

Jadhav, a school dropout who worked at a printing press in the Davangere region of central Karnataka, was arrested by the CCB police on September 28, 2023, after months of investigation into threat letters received by several progressive Kannada writers and thinkers between 2020 and 2023.

Jadhav, who wrote all his threat letters in Kannada, called his targets “anti-India, anti-national traitors”.