Mumbai Police have arrested a 30-year-old IIT graduate in Bengaluru for allegedly sending threatening Instagram messages to actor Ayushmann Khurrana and other film personalities, following a technical investigation by the Crime Branch.
The accused, identified as Vaibhav Chandra Mishra, was arrested by Unit 9 of the Mumbai Crime Branch in Bengaluru on Wednesday. Police said Mishra, a BTech graduate and native of Darbhanga in Bihar, is currently unemployed. He is being brought to Mumbai to be produced before a court.
DCP (Crime) Raj Tilak Roshan said the police traced Mishra through technical analysis of the Instagram accounts allegedly used to send threatening audio messages to Khurrana. Roshan said the accused had, prima facie, admitted to sending threats to the actor through Instagram.
“Our technical investigation led us to Bengaluru, where we arrested him. Prima facie, he has admitted to sending threats to Khurrana through Instagram. However, we suspect that he had created multiple fictitious Instagram accounts and may have sent threatening messages to a few other celebrities as well. This is being verified,” Roshan said.
Police have informed Mishra’s family in Bihar about the arrest. Preliminary inquiries, according to the Crime Branch, suggest that the alleged messages may have been sent out of frustration. Police also said they suspected that he might be experiencing certain mental health issues, though the investigation is continuing and no such assessment has been independently established in the report.
The arrest follows a separate threat complaint involving actor Tusshar Kapoor. Kapoor had approached the police after allegedly receiving threatening audio messages from an unidentified person who claimed to be Harry Boxer, a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. The messages reportedly demanded Rs 5 crore from the actor.
The Crime Branch’s technical team, assisted by the Crime Intelligence Unit, analysed the audio recording and compared the sender’s voice with official voice samples of Boxer available in its database. The examination reportedly found no similarity between the two voices. Police have not disclosed the identity of the person who sent those messages.
Following Kapoor’s informal alert to Mumbai Police, the police protection branch enhanced security for him and his sister, film producer Ekta Kapoor. Officials declined to disclose the category of protection provided to them.
The latest arrest comes amid heightened security concerns within Mumbai’s film industry. Those concerns intensified after the October 18 firing incident targeting actor Tiger Shroff outside his residence in Juhu. The Crime Branch has arrested several accused in connection with that case.
The developments show the role of technical investigation in tracing alleged threats sent through social media accounts and examining whether multiple accounts or identities were involved. In the present case, police said their inquiry into the other alleged messages and the accounts suspected to be linked to Mishra is still under way. The next formal step is his production before a Mumbai court.
