‘Will Destroy Shop if Sign Remains’: B’luru Karachi Bakery Warned

Bengaluru’s Karachi Bakery received a call threatening the bakery would be destroyed if ‘Karachi’ was not removed.

An outlet of Karachi Bakery in Bengaluru was on Friday, 22 February, forced to cover up the word ‘Karachi’ on its name board after a mob protested.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/ Prajwalmanipal)

Bengaluru's Karachi Bakery, located on 100 ft Road in Indiranagar, received a threatening call on Wednesday, 27 February, by a man who allegedly identified himself as Vicky Shetty, the underworld operative. This is the second threat that the bakery has received in less than a month.

The manager of Karachi Bakery, Sukumaran P, allegedly received the call on Wednesday afternoon.

“When I picked up the call, the caller said his name is Vicky Shetty and asked me if I am the owner of Karachi Bakery. He told me to tell the owner to remove the word Karachi from the board as people in India do not use the word Karachi. He said that if it is not removed in 24 hours, his boys would destroy the bakery,”

Sukumaran told <i>TNM</i>

According to Indiranagar Police Station Inspector Ravi, a VoIP (voice over internet protocol) platform was used to make the call to Sukumaran. The Indiranagar police filed a non-cognisable report on Wednesday afternoon and later registered an FIR under section 507 (criminal intimidation) after obtaining the court's permission to register an FIR.

“We know that the call was made via the internet, so it could not be traced. We are trying to find whether the caller was indeed the underworld don Vicky Shetty,” Inspector Ravi said.

This is the second time the manager of Karachi Bakery has received a threat regarding the bakery’s name. Last week, the Indiranagar Police arrested nine persons after they mobbed the bakery, raised slogans and demanded that they change the name. According to Ravi, they are currently out on bail. The mob had gathered around the bakery a few days after the Pulwama terror attack, which killed 49 CRPF jawans.

Vicky Shetty is an underworld operative, who is facing dozens of cases including murder and criminal conspiracy, in Dakshina Kannada district and Mangaluru. In 2018, the Dakshina Kannada district police had arrested his associates in connection with the murder of Abdul Jaleel Karopadi, the vice-president of a gram panchayat in Bantwal taluk. The police claimed Vicky was behind Jaleel’s murder, and did it over political and personal rivalry. Vicky Shetty is also suspected to have been the mastermind behind the killing of a convict in the Mangaluru prison in 2015. Soon after the murder of the convict, Vicky Shetty allegedly called a local news channel in Mangaluru and claimed responsibility for the crime, allegedly because he believed that the convict, Maddor Isbul, was an associate of Dawood Ibrahim.

(Published in an arrangement with The News Minute.)