Following a death threat from a Canadian NRI to veteran anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare on Facebook, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday increased the security detail outside his home and office in Ralegan Siddhi in Ahmednagar district.
Metal detectors have been installed outside his home and office while a further detail of four policemen have been added to the activist’s ‘Z-category’ security.
Mr. Hazare’s office has already lodged a complaint with the Mahatma Phule police station in Kalyan in Mumbai. They have also intimated the Maharashtra Director-General of Police of the threats that were posted on Facebook on February 24 and 25. Mr Hazare has been the target of death threats earlier.
In the threat, posted on the Facebook page of Mr. Hazare’s aide Ashok Gautam on February 24, a Canada-based NRI Gagan Vidhu ominously warns that the time had come to kill Anna Hazare and boasts that he [Vidhu] would be the next Nathuram Godse soon.
On February 25, Vidhu further writes: “I am not kidding. I am coming to India soon. I will arrange for gun and shoot this modern Gandhi [Mr. Hazare].”
Meanwhile, speaking from his home in the village of Ralegan Siddhi, Mr. Hazare brushed off the threat, saying he had been through such things many times in the past. He strongly urged the State government to bring to book the killers of Dabholkar and Pansare as ineffectual investigations were sending out a wrong message to society.