Rushdie hitmen claim shot down by cops

The Maharashtra Police on Saturday said it had no intelligence tip-off of any threat to Salman Rushdie from the Mumbai underworld during the writer’s cancelled India visit.

The Maharashtra Police on Saturday said it had no intelligence tip-off of any threat to Salman Rushdie from the Mumbai underworld during the writer’s cancelled India visit.

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Rushdie had pulled out of the Jaipur Literature Festival on Friday, saying “paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld” were planning to kill him. He quoted intelligence sources from Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

But Maharashtra Director General of Police K Subramaniam said: “We did not have any information of a threat to Rushdie from Mumbai. So the question of sharing such information (with him) does not arise.”

The Mumbai Police crime branch, which keeps tabs on the city’s underworld, too denied any such intelligence input. “We didn’t receive any information suggesting that the underworld is planning to harm Rushdie,” said DCP (crime) Nisar Tamboli.