Man makes bomb hoax call to delay court proceedings

April 27, 2016 12:00 am | Updated 08:16 am IST - Mumbai:

Unable to pay the lawyer appointed for him by the court, a 52-year-old man, accused of two cheating cases, allegedly made a hoax call to the police claiming that a bomb had been planted in the court where the cases were being tried. The police arrested him at his Nallasopara residence on Tuesday morning.

The police control room on Monday morning received a call from a landline number, and the caller, speaking in Hindi, said that a bomb had been planted in the Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court in Borivali, and that it was going to go off in a short while. The information was relayed to the Borivali police and a thorough search of the court premises yielded nothing. Apart from the Borivali police, the Crime Branch and the Anti Terrorism Squad conducted parallel inquiries.

“We found that the call had been made from a public telephone booth near the Grant Road railway station. We found a CCTV camera nearby which covered the telephone booth. A man was seen using the telephone at the time that the hoax call was received and we obtained stills capturing the man’s face. Working on the assumption that the call must have been made to delay proceedings at the court, we went to the Borivali court and went through details of all trials scheduled for Monday,” said senior police inspector Subhash Sawant, Charkop unit, ATS.

After going though the court records and comparing photographs of undertrials in cases scheduled for Monday with the blow-ups of the CCTV footage, the ATS zeroed in on Sandip Baria (52), a resident of Nallasopara, who was arrested last year in two cases where he robbed people by impersonating a policeman.

Sandip was picked up at his residence on Tuesday morning, and when questioned, he allegedly confessed to have made the call.

“The accused said that his cases had been expedited by the court, and consecutive hearings were being scheduled with gaps of a few days. As he had to pay his lawyer for every hearing, he was finding it difficult. To delay the trial and out of anger towards the Magistrate for expediting his cases, he made the hoax call,” Mr Sawant said.

Sandip has been handed over to the Borivali police.

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