Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Jan 30: A freelance journalist was arrested for allegedly impersonating Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and sending forged letters to several public sector units in a bid to obtain advertisements for his newspaper in 2016, police said on Sunday.
Adityanath was then a Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur.
The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of Delhi Police’s Special Cell arrested accused Manoj Kumar Seth (41) from his native Bhubaneshwar in Odisha.
Notably, Rajbhushan Singh Rawat, personal secretary to Adityanath, had filed a police complaint alleging that some unknown persons had created a fake email ID using the BJP leader’s credentials.
According to Rawat, the accused had sent emails and forged letters to public sector units such as Power Grid Corporation of India, ONGC and GAIL India. The accused also attached scanned letters with forged signatures of Adityanath.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) KPS Malhotra said during the course of the investigation, the fake email ID yogiadityanath.mp@gmail.com was identified and its contents were analysed to understand the motive.
“The alleged email was with a request to release advertisements in favour of an English newspaper. Similarly, fake emails and fake letters were sent to ONGC and GAIL for advertisement support in favour of another newspaper. Through the IP address analysis and human intelligence, we identified the accused as Manoj Kumar Seth,” said Malhotra.
Seth’s strategy had failed, according to police, and he had been shifting his hiding places to avoid investigators ever since. Despite the fact that many raids were undertaken at his suspected hideouts, he managed to elude the cops each time.
According to police, a dedicated team led by ACP Raman was formed to apprehend him.
“On Friday, Seth was arrested from Bhubaneshwar by our team and during interrogation, he revealed that he is a freelance journalist and also publishes a fortnightly newspaper. He had created the fake email ID and prepared the forged letters to seek advertisement support in favour of his local newspapers,” Malhotra said.
Seth is also involved in a case of extortion in 2020 at Chaliya Ganj police station in Cuttack on the complaint of an executive engineer of the public works department, Odisha, police said.
