Hoax caller, who warned about bombs at railway stations and court in MP, arrested

The city police crime branch on Sunday arrested Dharam Yadav, a native of Bawaria Kalan village in Shahpura area of Bhopal, in connection with the incident.

BHOPAL: A phone call on May 29 warning the Madhya Pradesh police about bombs planted at the Habibganj and Bhopal railway stations as well as the district and sessions court in the State capital was made by a 25-year-old man to implicate a fellow villager in a false case.

The city police crime branch on Sunday arrested Dharam Yadav, a native of Bawaria Kalan village in Shahpura area of Bhopal, in connection with the incident.

Yadav had made the call to the Dial 100 emergency number of the police informing them about having received information from two phone numbers on bombs planted at the two railway stations and the court. Questioning of Yadav revealed that he had borrowed Rs 15,000 from a fellow villager called Rakesh Kumar a few weeks back.

Kumar was pressuring him to pay back the amount. “Unable to repay the money, Yadav had made the hoax call to frame Rakesh in a false case. He told the Dial 100 service that he had received calls from two cellphone numbers about the bombs. Both the numbers given by Yadav belonged to Rakesh,” said additional SP (ASP Crime) in Bhopal Rashmi Mishra. “During investigation, we had initially detained a man called Suresh Raidas in whose name the cellphone number from which the call was made to the Dial 100 service was registered.

Raidas said he had lost the SIM card in January and had lodged a complaint about it at the Kolar police station then. We checked the information and found it was true,” said Mishra. Subsequently, the police tracked the cellphone numbers from which Yadav claimed to have received information about the bombs. “We questioned Rakesh Kumar, a resident of Bawaria Kalan village, in whose name both the numbers were registered.

But he told the police of not having made any call to anyone about bombs planted in government buildings,” the ASP-Crime added. The sleuths then zeroed in on the location of the number from the which the hoax call was made. “We tracked the caller, who was Dharam Yadav, and after detailed interrogation he finally admitted to having made the hoax call to get Rakesh Kumar implicated in a false case.

Yadav had found the SIM card registered in Raidas’s name lying on a road in the Kolar area in January and used it to make the call on May 29,” said Mishra. The ASP-Crime further said Yadav’s questioning revealed that he was booked in a rape case in the past by Kolar police in Bhopal. “The cellphone and SIM used by Yadav to make the hoax call have been seized,” Mishra added.

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