Bengaluru police arrested Shivaji Rao Jadhav (41) from Karnataka's Davanagere district for sending threat letters to more than 15 progressive Kannada authors and thinkers, police said on Saturday, September 30. Jadhav was arrested by sleuths of the Central Crime Branch (CCB). The police said that he was a member of a Hindu group but did not specify which group. 

The accused had been writing the threat letters for the past two years, leading to the targeted authors meeting Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on multiple occasions while demanding swift action.

In the letters, Jadhav threatened writers, including K Veerabhadrappa, BL Venu, Banjagere Jayaprakash, BT Lalita Naik, and Vasundhara Bhupathi, for going against Hindutva, saying that they should count their last days. Shivaji used to sign off as ‘Sahishna Hindu’, which ironically means tolerant Hindu.

In June 2023, after writer Dr Vasundhara Bhupathi lodged a complaint at the Basaveshnagar police station in Bengaluru, she received a warning letter from the same individual just three days later. The letter questioned her decision to involve the police and cautioned her against it, implying it was an unwise move on her part. “I had not told anyone about this, it was not reported in the media either, but still this person got the information. This made my family worry even more because it could mean that either I was being tracked closely or even that someone close to the police had leaked the information,” she had told TNM. According to the writers whom TNM spoke to, the timing of the letter always coincided with any public statement made by the writers against communalism.

On August 22, a group of progressive thinkers, writers, and intellectuals met with Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. The delegation, led by prominent writers K Marulasiddappa and Vasundhara, spoke about the persistent threats they had been facing for over 15 months. Collectively, they lodged numerous complaints, with seven First Information Reports (FIRs) being filed. Despite this, there had been little headway in the case, and the threat letters had persisted. Following the meeting with Siddaramaiah, the first since the Congress regained power, the government entrusted the investigation to the Central Crime Branch (CCB).

The case was handed over to the Special Wing CCB, and experts with the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) found that all letters were written by the same person but were posted from different districts and taluks. As a result of the letters, Home Minister G Parameshwara had directed the police to provide suitable security to the authors.

Read: An anonymous letter-writer is targeting progressive Kannada writers and liberals