Worried: Former MP Milind Deora received an inland handwritten letter that was addressed at his Khetan Bhawan office in Churchgate.
Former Member of Parliament (MP) from South Mumbai, Congress man Milind Deora, has complained to the Marine Drive police station that he got a letter of threat asking him to cough up Rs 25 crore or face the consequences.
The inland handwritten letter was addressed to Deora's Khetan Bhawan office in Churchgate. Deora, who lost to Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant in the Lok Sabha elections, was not in the office when it was received.
"The letter is in Hindi and says '25 crore do varna mehenga padega, ghar bhej do Rajasthan mein'," said a Marine Drive police officer who has seen the letter, but is not authorised to comment on the matter and hence requested anonymity.
After receiving the threat on Friday, Deora's office informed the Marine Drive police, and the cops, who were busy with IPL matches at the time and Gopinath Munde's funeral procession, have not yet scrutinised it.
"We have received the letter, but we were tied up with security arrangements for IPL matches, and then later with the events surrounding Gopinath Munde's funeral," said Pravin Chinchalkar, senior inspector of Marine Drive police station. Police sources said cops would investigate and figure out from which GPO the letter was routed to Deora.
"It is part of the procedure but tracing the GPO will hardly lead to any clue, since it will be next to impossible to trace the sender," a policeman said. Next, the officials will try and match the handwriting of the sender with that of all the staff in Deora's office and also some suspects in the case.
Earlier, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries, had complained to the police about receiving a threat letter. Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi and Farhan Azmi had also complained to the police about receiving threat calls. Paras Gupta, owner of Deepak Farsan in Kurla, had also received a threat letter. In all the cases, security was tightened for the complainants.