Raichur Tea Seller Arrested For Allegedly Seeking Pistol From Foreign Contact To Trigger Unrest In India

Bengaluru: The Raichur police have arrested Mohammed Sahil (24), a tea seller at Gandhi Chowk in Raichur town, who allegedly requested a foreign national on social media to provide him a pistol to create unrest in India.

According to police, they detected Sahil's activities during routine monitoring of social media activities, where he exchanged provocative messages against other communities and was constantly interacting on instagram with a person based in the middle east.

On July 8, the police detected Sahil liking provocative and hateful content on an instagram account called awais_rajpoot10. ``His activity continued for around 15 days and triggered an alert in our social media monitoring cell,'' Raichur SP Arunangshu Giri said.

While tracking his activities, the police found out that Sahil contacted the Instagram user called `Rana Bhai' on July 14 and asked him if he could help him get a pistol. The Instagram user then shared a WhatsApp number and Sahil to provide his contact details.

The subsequent examination of Sahil's phone revealed that the two had several WhatsApp conversations, voice calls,and audio messages with hateful content targeting a community. Sahil had shared his and his tea stall photographs with `Rana Bhai', who was encouraging Sahil to create unrest in India and offered to provide money and arrange a pistol for him.

During interrogation, Sahil told the police that `Rana Bhai' lived in one of the middle east countries. The police are now trying to ascertain the identity and location of the person behind the `Rana Bhai' accounts.

``Based on the material recovered from his phone, we have registered a case and questioned him. He was subsequently produced before the magistrate and has been remanded to judicial custody,'' Arunangshu Giri added.