Sanjay Kumar Singh and (above) Shivdeep Lande

Patna, Aug. 31: Back-to-back threat calls to two senior officers, a superintendent of police (SP) and a district magistrate (DM), have foxed the police administration, which has failed to make a breakthrough in tracing the callers, apparently because of short duration of the calls.

The common link in the cases is dreaded criminal Kundan Singh, who is presently lodged in jail for the murder of transporter Ravikant Choudhary. Sources told The Telegraph that in most cases, such threatening calls were made in a bid to frame a third person. On August 27, the person who called up Patna SP (central) Shivdeep Lande, claiming to be a Maoist area commander of Jamui district, had similar intention on his mind, the police said today.

Lande had received successive calls from a mobile number (7654738472) with the caller threatening to kill him, as he was showing too much interest in the Kundan Singh case.

Yesterday, Patna DM Sanjay Kumar Singh received a similar phone call from a mobile number (9097825782) on which the caller threatened to bump him off, if Kundan Singh was not freed from jail.

Singh said a formal FIR will be lodged in this connection by tomorrow.

“The mobile number from which the call had come has been forwarded to the police and the matter is being investigated. The FIR will be lodged by tomorrow,” Singh told The Telegraph today.

The men in uniform said investigations were on.

“At this moment, nothing concrete can be said. The police are making necessary investigations in the case,” Lande told The Telegraph. He said things did not appear to be serious but the caller was clever.

“The man is quite clever and knows about the police tracking system when it comes to mobiles. Before he gave a call to me, he called up a person in Bihta, stating that he was going to attack me. And then he called me up and repeated the same. Once the call came in, we started tracing the phone call and the tower location rested in Bihta area, around 35km from Patna. Whenever he calls me up, he calls the person before that. The other person is a clean man and holds repute in the area,” the officer said.

The police, through the present infrastructure, had tracked the person, who was receiving the calls too.

“The plan is simple. He wants to trap the person and hence, he calls him up too trying to show that he too is involved in the conspiracy. We have spoken to him and found him clean. Moreover, he knows how we track mobiles. It just lasts for a few seconds, not giving ample time for the police to trace his exact location,” the officer said.

Similar incidents to trap people have happened earlier too.

On April 1 this year, the police arrested members of a family, including two women who, angered over their daughter’s relationship with a man, had used her mobile to send threat text messages to Dinesh Kumar Singh, the MLA of Jagdishpur in Ara district. The women knew that the SIM card in the phone belonged to the girl’s boyfriend and hence, the family had planned the same to trap him.

Ten people were arrested in the drive last Saturday.

Meanwhile, the phone calls to the senior officers have given a chance to the Opposition to react. RJD MP Ram Kripal Yadav today said criminals were ruling the state.

“Such incidents prove that there is utter lawlessness in the state. Earlier too, there have been several threat phone calls made to many senior officers and bureaucrats as well as politicians. It proves that the criminals have got no fear of law and can choose to do their own will any time they want to,” he said.