Kerala police arrest man who wrote threat letter ahead of PM Modi's visit

The Kerala Police Sunday arrested a Kochi native who allegedly wrote a letter threatening suicide bomb attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his two-day visit to the state starting Monday. The police identified the accused as M Xavier, a native of Kaloor. Xavier confessed to investigators that he wrote the letter in the name of another person against whom he harboured personal animosity and whose name and phone number were mentioned in it.Kochi City Police Commissioner K Sethuraman told the media that the threat mentioned in Xavier’s letter was a hoax. “He (Xavier) wanted to trap another person. We arrested Xavier after collecting scientific evidence and conducting a forensic handwriting analysis,” he said.

Launching an investigation into the threat letter, the police had tracked down a person named N K Johny alias Joseph John, whose address was mentioned in the missive which said Modi would face the fate of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.Johny, also a native of Kochi, denied having written the letter but expressed the suspicion that a person who harboured a grudge towards him was likely to be behind the incident. On seeing the handwriting in the letter, he pointed a finger at Xavier. The animosity between the two stemmed from a dispute at their local church over financial matters in the parish. PM Modi is scheduled to flag off Kerala’s first Vande Bharat Express between Thiruvananthapuram and Kasaragod at Thiruvananthapuram Central Station on Tuesday. He will also lay the foundation stone for projects worth more than Rs 3,200 crore, besides dedicating the Kochi Water Metro to the nation.