Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha candidate from Karnataka Mallikarjun Kharge and his son Priyank, a two-term minister received threat calls on Sunday, with the latter filing a complaint with the state police chief.
Kharge, a former Union Minister, received the call in the wee hours of Sunday on his landline while his son Priyank later got a call from a private number on his mobile phone.
Priyank lodged a complaint with the Director General of Police Praveen Sood, and former MLC Ramesh Babu shared the copy of the complaint on Twitter on Tuesday.
In his complaint, Priyank Kharge stated that at about 1.30 am on Sunday, his father received a call on the landline where the caller spoke in Hindi and English and used invectives against the Congress veteran.
The caller, according to the complaint, spoke about the Rajya Sabha election and threatened Kharge. Police are looking into the matter.
Kharge is the Congress' pick for the June 19 Rajya Sabha election from Karnataka.
JD(S) supremo and former Prime Minister Deve Gowda and two BJP candidates have also filed nominations for the election to the Upper House.
The Hindu also quoted a police officer as saying that Priyank has submitted call record details to the police along with the complaint and so far, no FIR (first information report) has been filed in connection with the incident.
The Times of India reported that the case has been handed over to the Cybercrime police.
The Rajya Sabha nomination for Kharge comes after in May, 2019, Kharge lost out to a relatively politically inexperienced opponent in the Lok Sabha elections. The stalwart who has been a nine-time MLA from Chittapur and two-time MP from Gulbarga, was pipped by Dr Umesh Jadav who had then joined the BJP from the Congress.
The 76-year-old political behemoth had remained undefeated in every election he had contested in, prior to 2019.
(With inputs from PTI)