Man held for identity theft, sending threat msg against PM

Time of India

30-05-2025

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Bhagalpur: A 35-year-old man from Bihar's Bhagalpur district was arrested Thursday night for allegedly sending a threatening message against Prime Minister Narendra Modi using a fake social media account of his elderly relative that he had created.
The threat — which coincided with PM Modi's two-day visit to Bihar earlier that day, during which he participated in a roadshow in Patna and held a public meeting in Bikramganj — triggered alarm among law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
The accused was identified as Sameer Kumar Ranjan of Maheshi village. DSP (law and order) Chandra Bhushan said the threatening message — sent to intelligence officials, who subsequently relayed the information to Bhagalpur Police — was Ranjan's calculated bid to frame his septuagenarian relative, Mantu Chowdhary, also from Maheshi, with whom he had been embroiled in a property dispute.
Ranjan had allegedly posed as Chowdhary and used the latter's name and identity to implicate him due to personal grudges between them.
He also attempted to deceive both intelligence and police officers about his true identity.
After the message was received, intelligence agencies — including the NIA, IB — and Bhagalpur Police were placed on high alert. Bhagalpur SSP Hriday Kant formed an SIT led by DSP Bhushan and including officials from the Divisional Intelligence Unit, Counter Insurgency and Anti-Terrorism School, and Sultanganj Police.
The team began a discreet probe to trace the origin of the message.
The SIT found that Ranjan, a BCA graduate and computer-literate, had created a fake social media profile of Chowdhary and used that account on another smartphone to send the threatening message — bearing Chowdhary's address and cellphone number — via a virtual private network (VPN). A detailed technical analysis found that Ranjan had accessed that fake account 71 times.
During interrogation, he confessed to the crime.
"Chowdhary said he is illiterate and uses only a basic keypad phone. He claimed Ranjan had trapped him," said SSP Hriday Kant.
Ranjan told cops that he had lost his job during the Covid-19 pandemic and had been doing odd jobs, including sharecropping. "The accused remains in custody at Sultanganj PS under tight security," the SSP said, adding that technical teams will analyse data from the seized smartphone.
An expert said VPNs encrypt data and mask IP addresses, making such threats traceable only through in-depth forensic analysis.