BENGALURU: The staff of ‘Namma 100’ police control room were in for a shock when a man called the control room and said an explosive will be fixed in Vidhana Soudha and Nehru Planetarium. The caller said they will explode before September 25. A dog squad and security personnel at Vidhana Soudha immediately began combing through the premises to confirm it was a hoax call. Tension prevailed on the premises for a while as more than 30 staff members began a search for the explosives.
A senior police officer from Vidhana Soudha police station said that around 12.50pm a person claiming to be a Sridhar dialled the control room through his mobile phone and threatened that an explosive would be planted at Vidhana Soudha and the planetarium. He also said that he would send a person named Nagaraj who would fix it and then disconnected the call. Vidhana Soudha police were alerted about the incident and found that the caller had made the call from within the city. Based on a tip off, Nagaraj was picked up within two hours and Sridhar, an unemployed man, is still at large. A native of Mandya, he often comes to the city for a few days.
A senior police officer said Sridhar had revealed the details of Nagaraj, a resident of RMC Yard near Peenya. Nagaraj runs a photo studio and during interrogation he told police that there was a financial dispute between Sridhar and him. “Sridhar told everyone that I had conned him. To take revenge, he made the hoax call saying I would fix the explosive. He had also complained to Mandya police but they had not filed a case,” he told police.
Efforts are on to nab Sridhar and a team has been sent to Mandya, police said.
In July, 2015, Gokul Machery, a techie, had sent a bomb threat on Whatsapp to Kempegowda International Airport and police. Gokul had sent the messages using a SIM card SIM card that he had procured using the details of his friend. He later told police that he wanted to defame his friend and get closer to his wife, who he was infatuated to.