An anonymous call to the Egmore police station in Chennai on Tuesday evening claiming that bombs could be planted either at Egmore or Cuddalore railway stations sent the police into a tizzy.
In the brief talk, the anonymous caller said he overheard a group discussing about bombs that would be planted on Wednesday morning.
Acting on this alert, anti-sabotage teams of the Government Railway Police and the Railway Protection Force (RPF) conducted thorough checks at Cuddalore station on Tuesday night using a sniffer dog.
A detective dog of the Tiruchi RPF dog squad was retained at the station.
The call turned out to be a hoax, railway police sources said. Tuesday’s instance was yet another prank that the police had to deal with and act steadfastly in the recent past.
A few days ago, there was a slew of bomb threat messages. Anonymous letters in Tamil threatening that powerful bombs would explode at Srirangam and Lalgudi railway stations were sent to the respective station master.
Three more letters were sent — one to the Srirangam temple authorities, another to the R.R. Sabha, and the third to the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital authorities here a few days ago threatening that bombs would go off at these places.
A few months ago, the city police personnel were on their toes upon receipt of a threat call to the police control room that bombs would explode at a few places in the city. A similar call was made to the Ariyalur court threatening that bombs would explode in 36 hours.
In all these instances, the threat messages turned out to be hoax. Every threat message – be they conveyed over phone or sent by letter –was taken seriously and immediately acted upon, says a senior police officer here. Every threat message was treated as a “live bomb call” and the police carried out thorough checks.
The anonymous call or messages in the threat letters were brief, but what followed was an extensive operation on the part of the police thereafter.
The anti-sabotage teams would not leave the spot or its vicinity until they were convinced that there was no explosive substance as claimed, say security personnel. The police were unable to secure the pranksters except in a few cases.
In a couple of instances, the police arrested the threat callers after pursuing the leads from the mobile numbers from which the anonymous calls were made by the pranksters.
In another case, the railway police had arrested a painter who was an alleged habitual offender of writing threat letters.
