Mumbai:
A Mumbai court has sentenced a man to two years in jail for making a threat call to police and claiming underworld don Dawood Ibrahim was offering him money to kill PM Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, noting showing sympathy to the accused was not justified.
In a verdict delivered on March 29 in the 2023 case, First Class Judicial Magistrate (Esplanade Court) Hemant Joshi dismissed the defence’s argument that the accused, Kamran Khan, was mentally unstable.
The magistrate noted no evidence was produced by the accused to support his claim on mental health.
The court found Kamran Khan guilty of offences under sections 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes) and 506(2) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Besides handing him two years imprisonment, the court has imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him.
As per the prosecution, the accused made a call to the Mumbai police’s main control room in November 2023, wherein he threatened that he would blow up the state-run J J Hospital.
The accused further said “There is a threat to Modi’s life, Dawood Ibrahim is giving Rs 5 crore, he has asked (him) to eliminate Modi,” the complainant in the case told the court.
The person also stated that men of Ibrahim, designated as a global terrorist, were offering Rs 1 crore to him to blow up UP Chief Minister Adityanath with a bomb, the court was told.
As per police, the accused made the call to the control room when he was at J J Hospital in central Mumbai and his medical check-up by doctors was getting delayed due to a long queue of patients.
The court said it was clear the police machinery was caught in a bind due to the crime committed by the accused.
“Furthermore, the repetition of such offences by the accused is evident from the complaint. Considering the strain on the government machinery and the security of the very specific individuals who were threatened due to such rumours, showing sympathy to the accused would not be justifiable,” it noted.
The court, after going through all evidence on record, noted the prosecution has successfully established that the threatening call was made from Kamran Khan’s mobile number.
It then pronounced him guilty of the offences he has been booked for.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)