Cops say often they know a call just can't be genuine, but are forced to investigate as they can't take a chance
Cops say often they know a call just can't be genuine, but are forced to investigate as they can't take a chance
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Not bothered about how any bomb scare almost always causes mass panic, which by itself is a potential
mishap-maker, young thrill-seekersu00a0 are increasingly making hoax calls to the police control room so that they can have fun watching the "police action" unfold as the whole bomb-detection machinery is pressed into service, said officials.
There have been so many hoax calls of late that the police can now even guess which call is a hoax since they have become practised at reading the 'phoney' language of false callers.
"The police control room gets hoax calls often and it's become a nuisance," Vidhana Soudha Police Inspector D Ashok said. "Though we know that a call is a hoax, we can't take chances."
Waste of manpower
In a hoax bomb call made on October 28 to the control room, the caller said that he had overheard a conversation about bombs in the Vidhana Soudha and the adjacent Vikas Soudha building.
The Control Room officer, Glory Christiana, traced the call to a public call booth at Sri Jayachamarajendra Polytechnic in KR Circle. Christiana tried to call back several times, but she was unable to talk to the caller. She informed the Vidhana Soudha Security, who alerted the bomb disposal squad. Hours of intensive search later, the police concluded it was a hoax. The Vidhana Soudha police investigating the call found it was a prank by some students.
u00a0"Such calls are on the rise, as the jurisdictional police who register the case fail to pursue it enough to catch the culprits once they know it's a hoax," said a senior police officer. However, an officer from the control room said, "It is very difficult to track such calls as callers often use public booths to make the call."
Recently, the Cubbon Park police succeeded in tracking and arresting a youth from North Karnataka for making 28 hoax calls, as he had made the calls from a mobile.
Also read: Man held in bomb hoax case hoped to frame relative
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