MUMBAI, Apr 16: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has received an e-mail that threatens to harm him and seeks to extort money as police launched a probe and sought Google’s help to track down the sender.
Rajan received the mail from a gmail account, prompting authorities to step up his security. Cyber Cell of Mumbai Police today registered a case against unknown persons.
“A case (no. 20/15) has been registered with us under the Sections 387 (demanding extortion), 506-2(criminal intimidation) of IPC and Section 66-D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of IT Act,” said Mukund Pawar, Investigation Officer of Cyber Cell.
He declined to divulge the line of investigation.
The message, which threatened to eliminate the Governor, was received last month at the RBI’s official e-mail address, police said.
Though the police did not elaborate on the content of the threatening mail sent from isis583847@gmail.Com, police sources said it warned Rajan that he would be eliminated as a contract had been received to execute him.
The Reserve Bank had not issued any official statement on the matter till late in the evening.
RBI spokesperson said Rajan was in Washington along with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for the annual World Bank Group meeting and it will take some time to get his comments.
According to police sources, the electronic mail reads: “If Rajan pays more than the contract amount received to kill him, then he (perpetrator) would think as to what can be done (whether to kill Rajan or not).”
Preliminary probe suggests that the gmail account has been accessed from different countries, including Australia, Canada, Italy, Germany, the US, Nigeria, Poland, Belgium, Hong Kong and Ukraine, in a span of a few days, and the police said a proxy Internet Protocol address was used to send the email.
“We have taken note of it (threat mail) and the RBI Governor’s security has been beefed up,” Maharashtra Additional Chief Secretary (Home) K P Bakshi told PTI here.
Police spokesman Dhananjay Kulkarni said the e-mail was received by Rajan’s office 20-25 days back.
“This e-mail, it seems, has been sent using proxy server and it appears to be an act carried out by some Nigerians running a racket who are experts in doing so (sending threatening e-mails),” Kulkarni said.
“We (Cyber Cell) have also asked Google officials to trace down the details of the log-in ID and we may receive their reply in a week,” he added. (PTI)
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