16-yr-old booked for sending hoax mail about bomb at actor Salman Khan’s home

The actor was not at his apartment when the police team reached the spot. The team then evacuated the actor’s entire family to a safe zone.

A 16-year-old boy from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh was booked for sending a hoax mail to the Mumbai Police, claiming that a bomb was scheduled to go off at Galaxy Apartments in Bandra where Bollywood actor Salman Khan lives.

Bollywood actor Salman Khan (ANI)

The email read “Bandra me Galaxy, Salman Khan ke ghar par agle 2 ghante me blast hoga, rok sakte ho to rok lo (There will be a blast at Galaxy, Salman Khan’s house in the next two hours. Try to stop it if you can).”

The email, which was sent on December 4, had put the Mumbai Police on high alert. Additional commissioner of police Dr Manoj Kumar Sharma; deputy commissioner of police (zone 9) Paramjit Singh Dahiya; senior inspector (PI), Bandra police station Vijayalaxmi Hiremath, along with the bomb detection and disposal squad (BDDS) rushed to Galaxy Apartments to find the explosive.

The actor was not at his apartment when the police team reached the spot. The team then evacuated the actor’s entire family, including his parents Salim and Salma Khan, and his sister Arpita to a safe zone.

BDDS then scanned the apartment for nearly four hours.

An officer from Bandra police station said, “We checked every nook and corner of his apartment, and the building, which took us around three to four hours. Only after that, the family was shifted back to their apartment.” Senior PI Hiremath told HT, “Once we discovered the threat was a hoax, we tracked the culprit through technical intelligence and found that it was a minor boy from Ghaziabad. Accordingly, a team was dispatched to Ghaziabad.”

The boy, who was preparing for his CLAT (Common Law Admission Test), was advised by someone to hide in Tis Hazari Court to avoid the police, said a police officer.

But the team met his elder brother who is an advocate and explained to him about the email. His brother then convinced the 16-year-old to come home. On his return, the police team served him notice to be present before Bandra police.

During the inquiry, it also came to light that the boy had sent a threatening email to Kabir Nagar police station in Ghaziabad in January. “The teenager came to the police station and we produced him before the juvenile court. We filed a final report [charge sheet] against him [for a non-cognizable offence] after which the court allowed him to go,” said Hiremath.