Duo held for sending threat letters to political leaders

Incidentally, prominent leaders of the region from different political parties had been receiving threat letters demanding money to be deposited in a bank account or face dire consequences. In the last 7 days, 5 prominent leaders including Ashok Bhattacharjee, CPIM MLA and Mayor, Siliguri Municipal Corporation; Rudra Nath Bhattacharjee, TMC leader and former MLA; Shankar Malakar, Congress MLA; Manoj Dewan, BJP Darjeeling District president and Praveen Agarwal, BJP Organisation president had received the letters.

The computer-generated letters demanded that Rs 5 lakh be deposited in the account of one Surendra Kumar else the leaders and their kin would face dire consequences. The letters warned the leaders against seeking police help as they were under constant watch. Two bank account numbers of Surendra Kumar were mentioned in the letter. "On Thursday, we arrested two persons in connection with the letters. They admitted that they had sent the letters in order to frame Surendra Kumar. Similar letters have been sent to others also. We have recovered the computer and printer used in generating the letters," stated Tarun Haldar, DCP (West), Siliguri Metropolitan Police Commissionerate.