The Hindu : New Delhi News : Metro hoax caller nabbed

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Thursday, Jul 10, 2008
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New Delhi

Metro hoax caller nabbed

Staff Reporter

Used to claim a bomb has been planted at Chawri Bazar station

NEW DELHI: A 27-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly making several anonymous phone calls to the police during the past one month claiming that a bomb had been planted at Chawri Bazar Metro railway station.

The Police Control Room had received as many as six hoax calls in the past 45 days.

Following a sudden spurt in the number of hoax calls, Central Industrial Security Force personnel scrutinised the footage of closed-circuit television cameras installed near the phone booths from where the calls were made.

“Based on the study of the CCTV footage, we managed to short-list half-a-dozen suspects who were seen loitering near these booths when the hoax calls were made. The breakthrough came on Tuesday evening when a sub-inspector deployed at a centralised control room in Shastri Park noticed a young man dressed in red shirt and brown trousers entering the Chawri Bazar Metro station. The young man resembled one of the suspects in the CCTV footage,” said a senior CISF officer.

The information was passed on to the staff concerned and the young man, later identified as Ajit Singh of Chandi Chowk, was arrested. During interrogation, he purportedly told the police that a CISF staffer allegedly prevented him from entering the Central Secretariat Metro station in April as he was drunk. He felt insulted at this and decided to make false calls to take revenge on the security staff. He has purportedly confessed to having made four of the six calls.

Ajit, who reportedly works for a travel agency in Chawri Bazar, was later handed over to the Delhi Metro Railway Police at Kashmere Gate and a case was registered against him. Every time a call was made, bomb disposal teams and dog squads had to be rushed to conduct searches at the underground Metro station disrupting metro rails service to the inconvenience of hundreds of commuters.

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