Patna, May 30: Bihar politicians seem to have become soft target for anonymous callers. The latest victim of an anonymous call is Maheshwar Hazari, Member of Parliament (MP) from Samastipur Lok Sabha constituency.

Hazari received a text message from an unknown number 9162862750 threatening that his son would be killed if he failed to cough up Rs 50 lakh soon.

The JD (U) MP immediately apprised the director-general of police (DGP), Neel Mani, who, in turn, asked the assistant superintendent of police (secretariat) Satyavir Singh to look into the matter on priority basis.

The ASP said a first information report (FIR) has been already been lodged with the Secretariat police station in Patna against unidentified persons in connection with the incident. The MP told the police that four similar messages were also sent to him from other mobile numbers 9572820808, 8084186777, 8401581123 and 9661574074.

“An investigation is on to ascertain the identity of the person who sent the message to the MP,” the ASP said, adding that Hazari told the police that he received the text message when he was at his north Srikrishna Puri residence in Patna.

Sources said the Patna police immediately launched an investigation into the matter after getting a directive from the DGP. Sources said the Patna police were in touch with their counterparts in Samastipur as the SIM cards used for sending the text message to the ruling party MP were issued from there. A team is likely to visit Samastipur to collect detailed information about the SIM cards.

“We are not in a position to comment on the issue at this juncture,” said Samastipur superintendent of police Daljeet Singh. When pestered, he said the district police officers were already on their job. “Let me accomplish the task first,” he told The Telegraph.

Hazari is not the only politician of the state to receive threat calls on cellphones. Earlier, health minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashwini Kumar Choubey had received similar threat calls on his mobile. The anonymous caller had demanded Rs 20 lakh as extortion money and threatened to eliminate him if the money was not paid.

Choubey was taken aback after receiving frequent threat calls from numbers 7352534010 and 7870373247. “I received threatening calls thrice in a span of 40 minutes,” Choubey had told Patna senior superintendent of police Alok Kumar, who was assigned to probe the matter. Subsequently, a complaint was lodged with Shastrinagar police station and an investigation launched to trace the origin of the calls and the caller’s identity. A youth from Khagaria was arrested, who later confessed to his crime.

Another JD (U) MLA from Rupauli Assembly constituency in Purnea district Bima Bharti and her husband had received threatening calls. Bharti, who had earlier hit the headlines for being assaulted by her husband Awadesh Mandal had lodged an FIR with Akabarpur police station in Purnea district on April 5 this year, alleging that someone had threatened her with dire consequences.

“When my husband took the call, he, too, was threatened on the phone,” an investigating officer quoted the MLA as saying. Later, two youths were arrested from Bhagalpur in the case. A Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA from Jagdishpur in Bhojpur district Dinesh Chandra Singh had also received similar threat call on his mobile on March 28, 2011. A woman identified as Kanchan Singh was rounded up from Bhojpur for interrogation. During probe it emerged that her son Aditya Singh had made the call to the MLA.