Bollywood actor Salman Khan on Tuesday received another death threat. The sender, who claims to be jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi's brother, demanded that the actor pay him Rs 5 crore, a police official said.
The threat was received on the Mumbai traffic police helpline and an officer read it around midnight.
The message said: "If Salman Khan wants to stay alive, he should go to our (Bishnoi community) temple and apologise or pay Rs 5 crore. If he does not do so, we will kill him; our gang is still active."
Police are investigating the origin of the threat message and have beefed up security measures for Salman Khan.
It is also being probed whether the message is linked to Lawrence Bishnoi, who is in jail on various charges, including attempted murder and extortion.
This, however, is not the first time that the superstar has received a death threat. On October 30, Salman Khan received a similar death threat from an unknown person who demanded Rs 2 crore from him.
He received a death threat on October 18, wherein the sender demanded Rs 5 crore from the actor.
The message read: “Don’t take it lightly; if Salman Khan wants to stay alive and end the enmity with Lawrence Bishnoi, he will have to pay Rs 5 crore. If the money is not given, Salman Khan’s condition will be worse than Baba Siddique’s.”
Days later, the sender apologised for sending the message and called it a mistake. The Mumbai Police arrested a 24-year-old vegetable seller for threatening Salman Khan.
The death threats came after the murder of the former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique. On October 12, three assailants took down Baba Siddique when he was bursting firecrackers on the occasion of Dussehra outside his MLA son Zeeshan Siddique's office in Mumbai's Nirmal Nagar.
Following Siddique's murder, Salman Khan's security cover has been increased.
The tension between Salman Khan and Lawrence Bishnoi began in 2018 when a district and sessions court in Jodhpur granted bail in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case to Salman Khan after serving two nights in jail. His legal team argued that he had served time in jail during the earlier stages of the case.
In 1998, Salman Khan was accused of poaching two blackbucks during the filming of Hum Saath Saath Hain. His co-stars in the film Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Neelam Kothari Soni and Tabu, who were also accused, were acquitted due to the lack of evidence against them.
(With India Today, PTI inputs)