Police have arrested an alleged Sangh parivar sympathiser based in Davanagere, Karnataka, on the charge of writing anonymous letters threatening to harm progressive writers, thinkers and activists.

The Central Crime Branch of Bangalore police on Saturday confirmed the arrest of Shivaji Rao Jadhav, whose letters have caused a serious safety concern. Chief minister Siddaramaiah had stepped in and directed the police to track him down at the earliest.

CCB sleuths who have been on Jadhav’s trail for a few weeks arrested him on Friday and took him in 10 days’ police custody to interrogate him in detail and probe the possible involvement of anyone else. Police sources described Jadhav as a Sangh sympathiser.

Police sources said that while Jadhav appeared a lone wolf, they were not ready to rule out the possibility of him seeking the help of someone to post the letters, handwritten in Kannada and carrying the cancellation stamps of post offices in different districts of the state.

Progressive Kannada writers such as B.L. Venu, B.T. Lalitha Naik, Vasundhara Bhoopathi and Banjagere Jayaprakash, among others, had received the threat letters.

Jayaprakash has said he has received 13 such letters since June 2022. The recipients were warned against criticising Hindutva and associating with progressive writers S.G. Siddaramaiah, Bargur Ramachandrappa and Kum Veerabhadrappa, all strident critics of the saffron ideology.

The matter received much attention in the Congress-ruled state after noted writer K. Marulasiddappa in August wrote to state home minister G. Parameshwara about 15 writers receiving letters that threatened to harm them if they did not desist from writing against the Hindutva ideology.

Several writers eventually met the home minister and sought police protection, considering the nature of the threats and the fact that the state had already witnessed two fatal attacks over the last few years.

Rationalist scholar and writer M.M. Kalburgi was shot dead in August 2015 at his home in Dharwad, while journalist Gauri Lankesh was shot and killed at her doorstep in Bangalore in September 2017.

The apparent trigger for the spate of threat letters was the joint memorandum sent by 61 progressive writers, thinkers and activists in March to then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai about the Sangh parivar raking up communal issues such as hijab, and the banning of Muslim vendors at Hindu temple fairs.

The signatories had also objected to the then BJP government’s plan to make the Bhagavad Gita mandatory in schools and sought that the principles of the Constitution be taught instead.

The Congress government that came to power after a landslide victory in the May elections has since made reading of the Constitution mandatory in schools. The government had observed International Day of Democracy on September 15 by organising a mass reading of the Preamble to the Constitution in which more than 2 crore people, including school students, participated across Karnataka.

The arrest is part of the Congress government’s instruction to the police to crack down on hate speech and moral policing in the state.

Within weeks of the Congress assuming power in Karnataka, it formed an anti-communal wing in Mangalore, the coastal city that has over the years become a communal hotspot.

The police have not spared even Muslim Right-wing elements, while keeping a
check on activities by the Sangh parivar to send a clear message that no one indulging in hate crimes would be spared.