Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 22: The police and security agencies have launched a probe into a letter threatening to launch a suicide bomb attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visits Kerala for two days from Monday evening.
The letter, purportedly written in Malayalam by a person in Kochi, was sent to the Kerala state unit president of the BJP K Surendran, who in turn, handed it over to the police last week for investigation.
The handwritten letter along with alleged leak in the prime minister’s security arrangements has created a political storm with the BJP accusing the leftist government in Kerala of deliberately compromising the VVIP security.
The BJP has come down heavily on the “grave security breach and police failure.” The Union Minister of State V. Muraleedharan said the police have no clue about the “death threat’s” provenance or motive. He also said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should explain how the PM’s “classified security arrangement scheme” leaked.
Mr. Muraleedharan said the Elathur train arson incident, which had the shades of a terrorist attack and claimed three lives, emphasised the threat to national security posed by radicals “operating with impunity” in Kerala. He alleged that the State police viewed the PM’s security lightly.
Unlike for such threats if serious, the handwritten letter threatening to harm the prime minister, strangely carried the name of the sender, signature, address, mobile number and all relevant details. The police traced down the sender in Kochi, a person named N K Johny, a retired college teacher, whose address had figured in the letter, which said Modi would face the fate of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Johny denied having written the letter but alleged that a person who nursed a grudge against him was likely to be behind the assassination threat.
Johny told reporters that the police had come to his house and inquired about the letter. “The police have matched the letter with my handwriting. They are convinced that I was not behind the letter. Somebody who holds a grudge against me may have been behind the threat. I have shared the names of persons whom I suspect,” he said.
A senior official said the State police were verifying the letter’s provenance and the author’s motive. Investigators infer that a person in Kochi had possibly written the letter impersonating a neighbour with whom he had an axe to grind over some personal disputes related to parish levy collection.
Plainclothes officers visited the “sender’s” home and interviewed him. The police have sent the letter for forensic graphological examination to check its veracity and identify the “real” author.
The police were yet to testify to the “compromised” security scheme’s authenticity. Nevertheless, the 49-page correspondence circulated widely in the media and online platforms appeared to list the PM’s itinerary and timings in granular detail and specified the responsibilities assigned to individual officers tasked with his protection.
The letter’s existence emerged in the media after the purportedly “classified police document” detailing Modi’s security arrangements found its way, somewhat intriguingly, into the public domain. The “leaked security scheme” mentions the letter in its “threat perception” analysis in the context of Modi’s impending visit.
The “security scheme” catalogued the possible threats to the Prime Minister. The paper, supposedly meant for limited department circulation, notes that the recently proscribed Popular Front of India (PFI) had a significant cadre presence in Kerala. It said the outfit remained active under different guises in the State and required intense scrutiny ahead of Modi’s arrival.
The document noted that radicalised youth from Kerala, including women, had aligned themselves with various Jihadist groups, including the Islamic State and Jabhat Nusra. It also called for increased watchfulness, given the recent arrest of certain radical elements by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) from Kakkamala in Kannur.
The document also flagged possible black flag protests against Modi, who will likely hold a roadshow in Kochi on Monday. The police also factored in the political context of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) questionnaire campaign and mustering of cadres to “bust the Modi myth.” The paper did not specify any youth organisation by name.
The BJP Surendran has slammed the state police “for leaking the VVIP security plan pertaining to the visit” of the Prime Minister. “Religious extremist outfits are very strong and active in Kerala. The report of the state intelligence chief has been leaked out to the media. It has reference to several organisations including the banned PFI, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), SDPI and Maoists. But the state government is protecting these outfits,” he alleged.
Surendran said the State police’s “mishandling” of VVIP security would not take the sheen of Modi’s public outreach programmes. He said the police had botched or gone slack in their investigations and further exacerbated the situation by failing to ensure the PM’s security scheme remained classified.
The State Special Branch has reportedly launched an internal enquiry into how the security scheme, which included the name and deployment of scores of officers, ended up in the public domain.
Meanwhile, the whirlwind tour by Modi from Monday through Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat and the union territory of Silvassa will take the prime minister through seven cities, attend eight programme and travel over 5,300 kilometres in 36 hours.
Modi will travel from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh in central India, then to Kerala in south, followed by the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu in west, before returning to the national capital on Tuesday, officials said.
They said the Prime Minister will travel from Delhi to Khajuraho, covering a distance of around 500 km, and then to Rewa to participate in a National Panchayati Raj Day programme. After this, he will come back to Khajuraho, covering a distance of around 280 km in the to and fro journey, and then travel to Kochi, covering an aerial distance of about 1,700 km, to participate in the Yuvam Conclave.
On Tuesday morning, Modi will travel from Kochi to Thiruvananthapuram, covering a distance of about 190 km, where he will flag off a Vande Bharat Express train and also dedicate and lay the foundation stones of various projects. From there, the Prime Minister will travel to Silvassa via Surat, covering about 1,570 km, the officials added.
At Silvassa, Modi will visit the NAMO medical college and dedicate and lay the foundation stones of various projects. After this, he will travel to Daman for the inauguration of the Devka seafront, following which he will go to Surat, covering about 110 km. From Surat, Modi will travel back to Delhi, adding another 940 km to his travel schedule, the officials said.
“The hectic schedule will see the Prime Minister travelling an aerial distance of around 5,300 km. To put this figure in perspective, one can look at the length of India from north to south, which is about 3,200 km,” an official said, noting that the entire travel and other programmes of the Prime Minister are packed in only 36 hours.
Modi is known to keep a busy schedule during his travel, domestic as well as international, and officials have often highlighted how the Prime Minister ensures that his trips are packed with important meetings and programmes.