Five days after an unidentified caller made a hoax bomb threat at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, the Sahar Police have apprehended a man from Lucknow. The accused was also found in possession of a diary, wherein he scribbled names of a few known people. The police claim the accused is mentally unstable..
According to police sources, the probe revealed that the accused – identified as Mohammed Illiyas Mohammed Hanif, 45 – had made the threat call using a multimedia network. He was arrested on Saturday. The technical investigation led the police to Hanif’s hometown in Lucknow, where they also recovered a phonebook from his house, in which he had written contact numbers of several establishments to make such idle threats.
The police are now verifying all angles of the case, to ascertain if Hanif had made similar threats to others and if there are any cases registered against him in other cities. Hanif has been booked under sections 505(1)(b) (intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, fear or alarm to the public) and 506(2) (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. He was produced before a local magistrate court and remanded in police custody.
Sources claimed that after the threat call was received by the traffic control room, the Sahar police arranged the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS), a dog unit and a quick response team and rushed to the airport to conduct a search operation, even as other agencies frisked the fliers and checked the airport premises thoroughly, only to find nothing.