Mumbai, Sep 12 (IANS): The Maharashtra Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Saturday said that the recent threat calls to several state leaders were made by the same Kolkata gym instructor Palash Bose who was arrested by Mumbai Police on Thursday.
Posing as an associate of absconding mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, the accused had allegedly made threat calls to Chief Minister and Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray, Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar, state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and Sena chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut during the week.
Using technical intelligence, the Mumbai Police nabbed Bose from his Tollygunge home in south Kolkata and brought him to Mumbai on transit remand from Alipore court (Kolkata) and the probe is now being handled by the ATS.
The operation was carried out by a crack team of ATS comprising Inspector Daya Nayak, APIs Dashtra Vitkar and Sachin Patil and constable Dhiraj Rane.
"On the basis of sources' information, we conducted the operation with the help of Kolkata Police to zero in on the accused and arrested him. We have seized two mobile phones, one Indian and three international SIM cards. He has confessed to the crime in our preliminary interrogations," said an ATS official.
A BSc graduate, Bose had worked in Dubai for around 15 years and now the ATS is probing his possible links with any crime syndicate after he admitted to making landline calls to Thackeray, Pawar, Deshmukh and Raut using his international SIM numbers earlier this week.
On Friday, his lawyer Anirban Guhathakurta had said in a statement: "Palash Bose, resident of Tollygunge, has been arrested yesterday (Thursday) night by Mumbai Police allegedly for a threat call to MP Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena. It has been alleged that Palash is a supporter of Kangana Ranaut, and so this threat call."
The police are also probing Bose's connections with Kangana, and what might have provoked him to allegedly call and threaten Raut using the actress' name.
Bose's arrest came at a time when there is increasing friction between Kangana and the Shiv Sena over her recent tirades at the Mumbai Police and the MVA government in Maharashtra, after which on September 9, the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation razed her "illegal office" in suburban Bandra.