Sniffer dogs and police rushed to the office of the Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer after it received a bomb threat letter on Monday evening. Despite thorough checks, no explosive devices were found.
Panic gripped the office after officers received the anonymous letter. The Fort police station and the police control room were immediately informed. According to reports, officials were asked to leave the premises while the search was underway.
The letter, written in Tamil, merely said that the bomb will go off soon. While the search was being carried out, Tamil Nadu Chief Election Commissioner Satyabrata Sahoo held a meeting with the district election officers to discuss the vote counting. The area was later found clear and the police determined that it was a hoax.
The police are now trying to trace the address of the sender and are checking CCTV footage to determine who dropped off the letter.
“The letter did not mention anything else other than saying that a bomb would go off soon,” a police officer told The Times of India. “We did not want to take any chances. So a thorough check was conducted,” he added.
In April, too, the police in Tamil Nadu were on high alert after a hoax bomb call. A call to the Bengaluru police control room sent the security apparatus in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu into a tizzy. The man, a lorry driver named Swamy Sundar Murthy, who made the call warned of possible terror attacks in eight Indian states, including the five southern states. He was arrested by the Bengaluru police who determined that the threat was fake.
But by then, the Karnataka Director General of Police (DGP), Neelmani N Raju, sent an alert to the top police officers of all the states about the warning. This alert, in turn, prompted the government of Tamil Nadu to send out a message to all the district police chiefs and Collectors to be on high alert.
Source: The News Minute