An engineering student created tension and panic at the Hyderabad Regional Passport Office at Secunderabad on Tuesday morning by posing as a ‘suicide bomber’ and threatening to blast the office.
Rupesh Kumar, a resident of Adoni town in Kurnool district, came to the passport office and stood first in the queue. Donning the garb of a ‘suicide bomber’ with ‘bombs and gelatin sticks’ hanging around his body, a ‘remote’ in his hand and his face covered in a mask, he threatened to ‘blow’ himself up if anybody came nearer him. He kept roaming in the area for almost an hour with terrified onlookers and security personnel maintaining a safe distance.
The youth was over-powered by a shopkeeper in the area Imtiaz Hussain Pasha who jumped on Rupesh and caught him. The police later took him into custody and shifted him to a corporate hospital as he was suffering from hyper-tension.
The bomb disposal squad, which rushed to the spot with a sniffer dog, found that what he was showing as ‘bombs’ and ‘gelatin sticks’ were nothing but different broken objects, including parts of an electric timer, wrapped up in paper. No explosives or detonating devices were found.
{{/usCountry}}The bomb disposal squad, which rushed to the spot with a sniffer dog, found that what he was showing as ‘bombs’ and ‘gelatin sticks’ were nothing but different broken objects, including parts of an electric timer, wrapped up in paper. No explosives or detonating devices were found.
{{/usCountry}}Rupesh told the police that he enacted the drama as a protest against the apathy of Hyderabad Passport Office. He claimed that he had applied for a passport for his sister Ritu Singh more than a month ago but did not get any reply from the staff to his queries. He only wanted to draw attention of higher authorities to his problem by posing as a ‘suicide bomber.’