A week after the incident,the Mumbai Police have formed a special team to probe a threatening call received by civic activist Neera Punj,one of the founding members of Citispace. Punj had earlier received a similar call on January 8,the day on which gunshots were fired outside the house of her colleague Nayana Kathpalia. Policemen have also been deployed outside her house. The team will also look into the case of threats and attacks on social activists in the city. We will explore all angles in the case, said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Deven Bharti. The Bombay High Court had,on January 21,asked DGP A N Roy to take the attacks on social activists seriously and file an affidavit on the steps taken to probe such attacks. The suo-motu notice came in the wake of the attack on Kathpalia and the murder of Pune-based RTI activist Satish Shetty. Citispace works for the preservation of open spaces in the city. The FIR in the Punj case was filed at the Marine Drive police station and the call has been traced to a PCO booth in Byculla. We questioned the booth-owner,but could not get much information as the owner is visually impaired, said Zunjarrao Maruti Gharal,senior police inspector,Marine Drive police station. Punj said,Its been almost a week,but the investigation has made little progress. In both the calls she received,the caller had referred to a litigation Citispace had filed against slum rehabilitation programmes in open spaces like parks,playgrounds and no-development zones.
