Karnataka Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader KS Eshwarappa was on Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Popular Front of India (PFI)’s target, as the groups were allegedly planning to kill him, revealed gangster Jayesh Pujari.

According to a Times Now report, the gangster had given a “supari” to one of his associates in Karnataka’s Belagavi, to kill the BJP leader. The news organization also got in touch with Eshwarappa himself, who reportedly said he wasn’t afraid of any threats. He said he works towards “saving Bharat Mata” and that patriots are not afraid.

He went on to call himself an “Hindutvawadi”, and said nobody can kill Hindutva, the news report further stated. Ahead of Karnataka assembly elections due soon, Eshwarappa recently announced that he would not contest the polls this year.

He told BJP’s central leadership that he wished to retire from electoral politics and requested it to not consider fielding him from any constituency in the May 10 Karnataka Assembly polls, a PTI report said.

Notably, Jayesh Pujari alias Kantha alias Salim Shahir Kantha, a murder convict, is accused of making threatening calls to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s public relations office first in January and then in March.

Officials of the Intelligence Bureau have questioned him since Nagpur police took his custody from jail in Belagavi, police sources said.

Nagpur Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar on Thursday said that the probe revealed that he had connections with the Dawood gang, PFI, and LeT. “He has been radicalised. He was hatching a conspiracy in jail with other D-gang (Dawood gang) members,” PTI quoted Kumar as saying.

The Dhantoli police in the city have invoked the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against him.

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