Mumbai Police steps up security amid threat calls and bomb hoaxes

The latest incident was recorded on Monday when an unidentified person called up the Lalit Hotel near the airport claiming that four bombs had been planted on the premises.

Mumbai: With three threats made in different parts of the city this year and the state’s biggest religious festival around the corner, the Mumbai Police is working round the clock to detect the cases so that swift punishment may act as a deterrent to others. Besides, security has also been stepped up across the city and uniformed police presence increased.

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The latest incident was recorded on Monday when an unidentified person called up the Lalit Hotel near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport claiming that four bombs had been planted on the premises. The caller demanded ₹5 crore in exchange for revealing the locations of the purported bombs but a search of the hotel revealed nothing.

Last week, the traffic police control room’s WhatsApp number received a string of messages threatening a terror attack, while on August 15, a Dahisar resident was arrested for making threat calls to Reliance Hospital’s landline number.

“Every threat call, regardless of its prima facie credibility, is always treated with the utmost seriousness. We immediately draw up a list of possibilities connected to the call. For example, if it is a bomb threat, we identify places where a bomb can be placed at the target location as well as where it can be brought in from. At the same time, all police stations are instructed to start random nakabandis as well as check with hotels and lodges about recent suspicious arrivals,” a senior officer with the Mumbai Police said.

The police also scan social media regularly for any chatter pointing towards suspicious activity as well as to find out whether any posts are being shared that support any threat calls or messages. Simultaneously, special units like the Crime Branch and the Anti-Terrorism Squad check on recent movements of known members of criminal gangs with a history of anti-national activities.

On the investigation front, inquiries are immediately initiated to trace and apprehend the callers. The registration details and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the devices used by the suspects are obtained to pinpoint their locations.

“In such cases, a good offence is the best defence. The sooner we apprehend the callers, the stronger the message that such activities will not be tolerated. Threat call cases are always investigated on a priority basis to ensure this,” another officer said.

For this same reason, the probe into the threats received via WhatsApp last week was immediately handed over to the Crime Branch. Sources said that the same is likely to be done in the Sahar case if the local police are unable to solve it quickly.

“The one big reason behind the relatively slow progress in the WhatsApp threat message case is that the investigation spans across borders. Liaising with organisations or government agencies based abroad is always a lengthy process but at the same time, we keep up our independent intelligence gathering to make sure that the probe keeps moving ahead steadily,” a Crime Branch officer said.

UK-based VPN used to send threats from Pakistani number

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) based in the United Kingdom (UK) was used to send the threat messages on the WhatsApp helpline number operated by the Mumbai traffic police control room last week, sources in the Mumbai police crime branch said. They said the crime branch has written to the service provider and sought details of the customer, who purportedly used the network from Pakistan. The police officers, however, said the possibility of the phone number being hacked and used for the purpose by some anti-social elements cannot be ruled out.

Police said the Crime Branch has sent multiple teams to Uttar Pradesh and Haryana for questioning the people whose mobile numbers were mentioned in the threat messages and are trying to find out if there was any common link between them. Seven mobile numbers were mentioned in the messages and the Crime Branch has identified the users of all those numbers.

One of the mobile numbers was traced to Virar and found in the possession of a 26-year-old barber, who hails from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh and came to Maharashtra in the first week of August and was staying at his relative’s place at Virar.

The messages, in Hindi, began coming in at 10.50 pm and claimed that seven Indians were part of a terror plot that would be worse than 26/11. The person, claiming to be from Pakistan, went on to mention names like Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone terrorist from the November 2008 terror attacks to be caught alive and executed, as well as recently assassinated Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

With inputs from Manish K Pathak