In the case of recent threat emails to industrialist Mukesh Ambani, the Mumbai crime branch has revealed that one of the arrested accused, Rajveer Khant, 21, created an email ID in the name of Pakistani cricketer Shadab Khan.
The son of a constable in the Gujarat police, Khant was arrested from Kalol in Gandhinagar on Saturday. He sent the first email to Ambani on October 27, demanding Rs 20 crore and threatening to kill him if he didn’t pay.
He created the ID shadabkhan@mailfence at a time when a World Cup cricket match was underway between Pakistan and South Africa. At that time, Khan was batting and had scored 46, Khant told the crime branch about how the idea germinated. He said he was watching the match and thought of creating the email ID after Khan’s name.
Khant explores dark web
The police said Khant spent endless time on the dark web and came to know that the server of an email provider company named Mailfence is in Belgium and that this firm does not share the information of its email users with anyone. Khant had used a VPN network to hide his location.
The crime branch found out that 150 people across the country had used Mailfence on the day the threatening email was sent. All these users were scrutinised and the email to Ambani was traced to Gandhinagar.
Second accused handed over to crime branch
A third-year BCom student, Khant sent five threatening emails to Ambani. In the first email he demanded Rs 20 crore, raising the demand to Rs 200 crore in the second email and then to Rs 400 crore.
The second accused, Ganesh Ramesh Vanapardhi, a 19-year-old computer science student, was arrested for threatening to kill Ambani and demanding Rs500 crore. Arrested from Warangal in Telangana, he has been handed over to the crime branch by the Gamdevi police. A police officer said that when Vanpardhi saw the news on a channel that Ambani had received a threat of Rs 400 crore, he also sent an email (using gmail) demanding Rs 500 crore. Both the arrested accused are in the custody of the crime branch till November 8.
