Indian cricket head coach and former BJP MP Gautam Gambhir has received a death threat from a shadowy group calling itself “ISIS Kashmir”.

Gambhir received the emails on Tuesday, the day terrorists killed at least 26 people, mostly tourists, at the picturesque Baisaran meadow in south Kashmir’s Pahalgam.

According to Gambhir’s office, the threats came via a suspicious Gmail ID, with two separate emails sent on the same day. Both emails contained a single word: “IKILLU”.

A representative from Gambhir’s team confirmed to The Telegraph Online that a formal complaint was lodged at Rajinder Nagar police station on Wednesday.

“We have faith in the system and expect the police to crack down on this seriously,” the source said.

The Delhi police told PTI that an investigation was on.

“We have launched a probe into the emails received by Mr Gambhir,” a senior official was quoted as saying, and that the cyber cell was looking into the source of the threats.

This is not the first time the former cricketer has been targeted.

In November 2021, Gambhir received similar threats from the same outfit, including an email that said, “We are going to kill you and your family”, along with a video allegedly filmed outside his residence in Rajendra Nagar.

At the time, Delhi police had traced the origin of those emails to Pakistan and stepped up security around his home.

In December 2019, Gambhir had also reported receiving threatening calls from an international number, which led to heightened security.

Given his political background, having represented East Delhi in Parliament as a BJP MP until 2024, and his outspokenness on national security issues, security arrangements at Gambhir’s Delhi residence are being reviewed once again.

The group that has claimed the threat letters is shadowy, even more than most terrorists outfits.

In February 2016, the Islamic State’s erstwhile online magazine Dabiq had reported that the IS’s Khorasan wing would be “expanding to Kashmir to fight the cow-worshipping Hindus and the apostates from factions allied to the idol-worshippers of Pakistan, such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba”.

In November 2018, Delhi police had arrested three terrorists belonging to the Islamic State Jammu and Kashmir (ISJK) in Srinagar and recovered weapons and explosives.

In July 2022, after an attack in Srinagar that killed a policeman dead and left two others wounded, the ISJK (Sawt-Al-Hind) had released a threat letter on social media in which it had also told “so-called fighters of ISI to steer clear of our operations”.

On March 20 last year, the Assam police had arrested Haris Farooqi, whom the police called the ISIS India chief, and an aide in Dhubri while entering illegally from Bangladesh.