Abandoned shin guards cause alarm near Kotla

A pair of shin guards, found abandoned near the Delhi Secretariat and a short distance away from north Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, where a test match between India and Australia was going on, sent the Delhi Police into tizzy on Saturday evening.

A pair of shin guards, found abandoned near the Delhi Secretariat and a short distance away from north Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla stadium, where a test match between India and Australia was going on, sent the Delhi Police into tizzy on Saturday evening.

HT Image

On high alert considering that the festival of Holi is around the corner and especially after the arrest of an alleged Hizbul Mujahideen commander this Friday, the ‘suspicious-looking’ pair was discovered by a PCR van patrolling the Old ITO Bridge around 9pm.

“Since the shin guards were lead-based, they struck the patrolling party as odd and as a precautionary measure, the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS) was alerted and asked to reach the spot to examine them,” said Devesh Chandra Shrivastava, additional CP (central).

Examination, police claimed, revealed that these were nothing but a pair of discarded shin guards — the kind used by sports people and physiotherapists alike. These were then disposed off at a garbage dump.

“We didn’t want to take any chance given the proximity of the spot where these had been found to the stadium as well as a Jama Masjid hotel from where arms and ammunition, meant for a terror plot, have recently been recovered,” said another officer.