In the fourth such instance after becoming the Jharkhand chief minister, Hemant Soren has received an anonymous email threatening him. Police sources said the sender has been identified.

The email was sent to the official address of the secretary to the chief minister (secretarytocmjharkhand@gmail.com) on May 25 at 3.19pm. The email written in English hurls expletives at Soren and warns: “I will bear your death ceremony cost from my personal pocket. Third class…. Die as soon as possible.”

A case was lodged by the chief minister’s office at Gonda police station in Ranchi on the same day. Gonda police sub-inspector Dipak Kumar investigated the case and submitted his probe report on June 1.

The investigating team with the help of cyber cell of Ranchi police found the sender’s email (vikram.mouneshwar@gmail.com) and zeroed in on the IP address and other details of the accused Vikram Ghodgari Mouneshwar, who is a resident of Bangalore, Karnataka, and also traced his mobile number.

“We have lodged a case under Sections 385 and 387 (putting a person in fear of injury in order to commit extortion) of the IPC,” said a source in the Ranchi police who refused to be named.

Ranchi city superintendent of police Sourav Kumar confirmed the incident but said that they are not in position to comment further. “We have received a complaint and are investigating it. We cannot disclose much about the case at the moment,” he said.

However, sources in Ranchi police said they had managed to nab the accused a few days after submission of the probe report.

The police found that the accused did not have any criminal antecedents and was actually suffering from depression due to the Covid-19 pandemic and had written the email not in a fit state of mind. The police also found that the youth hailed from a good family.

“The matter was discussed with the chief minister’s office a few days earlier and the youth who had been detained was released on bail bond by the police on the directive of Ranchi SSP (senior superintendent of police) Surendra Kumar Jha,” a source said.

On July 8 and July 17 last year and again on January 5 this year, Soren had received anonymous threat emails. But the police failed to make much headway in any of these cases as the IP address of the servers were found to be in Germany and Switzerland and the cyber cell has not been able to identify the sender of the emails.

Sources in the chief minister’s office refused to comment on the fresh email threat.