The Karnataka intelligence official also said the arrested Nazi war criminal had been deported to Berlin. Israeli groups hunting for war criminals around the world had traced Bach, he added.

“However, it was an oral report that we received. The case did not happen within Karnataka’s jurisdiction, so we did not follow it. Lots of things happen on the Internet and we cannot authenticate everything,” Bidari said.

“We have only been reading about this in media reports. We are not wasting our time over it,” Karnataka Director General of Police R Srikumar said on Monday.

Police officials in Hubli and Belgaum have over the last three days maintained they had no knowledge of the arrest. “The local police in Belgaum are not aware of any arrest if it was indeed carried out. We have no knowledge,” Belgaum Inspector General of Police Raghavendra Auradkar said.

Karnataka Home Minister V S Acharya also denied any official information on the arrest and maintained it was restricted to the media. The Germany embassy in New Delhi and the consulate in Mumbai also said they had received no information of the arrest. Embassy officials said they could not confirm the existence of a German intelligence wing called Perus Narkp.

Journalists from the German publication Der Spiegel who contacted The Indian Express said there is no existence of any war criminal named Johann Bach in their exhaustive lists.