Hoax bomb caller threatens to blow up residences of PM, Kejriwal

Security officials were sent into a tizzy after they received a call from a man, who claimed to have planted bombs at the residences of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday afternoon.

Security officials were sent into a tizzy after they received a call from a man, who claimed to have planted bombs at the residences of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday afternoon.

In this file photo, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal can be seen leaving from Patiala House Court after a hearing of a defamation case against him filed by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley. (Arun Sharma/HT Photo)

The call later turned out to be hoax.

A senior police official said the call was received around 12.30pm at the control room of the National Investigation Agency, which informed the matter to the police immediately.

Several teams, with bomb disposal squads, were rushed to the Prime Minister’s 7, Race Course Road residence and the Kejriwal’s residence at Flagstaff Road in Civil Lines.

“Thorough checks were conducted in both places but nothing was found. It was a hoax call,” the official said, adding Delhi Police’s anti-terrorism unit Special Cell was also informed about the matter.

The call was made through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service and efforts are on to trace the man behind it. A case is also likely to be registered in connection with the matter, the official added.

Earlier this week, a man had called up the police control room threatening to have planted bombs in Rashtrapati Bhavan and undisclosed locations in central Delhi.

The man later was tracked down in southwest Delhi’s Sagarpur area and turned out to be a drug addict who had called up the control room seeking former city police commissioner B S Bassi’s phone number. When refused by the operator, he claimed having planted bombs.