Jharkhand Congress president Rajesh Thakur on Monday evening lodged a complaint at a police station in Ranchi against BJP Karnataka leader Manikanta Rathod for allegedly using abusive language and threatening to kill Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge and his family.

The complaint which the Congress state’s spokesperson Rakesh Sinha described as a ‘zero FIR’ (unlike an FIR which is restricted by jurisdiction, a zero FIR can be filed in any police station regardless of the place of occurrence of the offence) was lodged at Kotwali police station in Ranchi around 5pm.

“Our state president had to lodge the zero FIR at the Kotwali thana to highlight a sinister conspiracy by a BJP candidate for Karnataka Assembly elections to kill the AICC president and his family,” said Sinha.

Kotwali police station officer-in-charge Shailesh Prasad confirmed receiving the complaint.

“We will be sending it to the concerned police station in Karnataka state for compliance,” said Prasad.

“The above-stated murder plot is very clear from the audio recording of BJP candidate (in Kannada) from Chittarpur Manikanta Rathod who also happens to be the blue-eyed boy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister of Karnataka Basavaraj Bommai,” the complaint states.

“The frustration and the desperation of the BJP and its leadership have now reached dangerous proportions that the BJP leaders are openly plotting the assassination of Mallikarjun Kharge, his wife and the entire family,” it adds.

The complaint urges the police to register FIR against Manikanta Rathod and other leaders of the BJP under relevant sections of the IPC and/or other appropriate provisions of the law.

Significantly, a similar complaint has been filed by Goa Congress at Panaji police station on Monday against the Karnataka BJP leader.