Washington: The outburst against outsourcing of jobs to countries like India has taken an ugly turn with an Indian-American candidate for the Congressional polls in California getting phone calls threatening to "eliminate" him.

Democrat Rohit Khanna, who contested the Congressional elections from San Francisco and San Mateo County, received a series of phone calls on Tuesday (Mar 2, 2004) threatening to "eliminate" him and his supporters, a media report said.

The unidentified caller accused Khanna and other Indians of taking jobs from real Americans, the Democrat's campaign manager Andres Ramirez said.

"The calls started coming in at the (campaign) headquarters at about 9.00 am on election day and continued every five minutes until late afternoon," Ramirez was quoted as saying by the 'San Mateo Daily Journal'.

Ramirez initially ignored the calls and hung up, but was alarmed when a caller said he would "eliminate Ro and all you guys".

Khanna, popular among his supporters as 'Ro', was feeling down after his loss in the election and declined to comment.

"These kind of calls happen in every campaign," said Ramirez. "But these particular calls had a different tone. We never got anything as insensitive as this."

A complaint had been lodged with the San Bruno Police Department and was being investigated, the report said.

Khanna, who polled over 14,000 votes to finish second, lost to Republican Tom Lantos who got 40,000 votes.

Khanna was informed about the calls yesterday (Mar 4, 2004).