COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore city police on Wednesday arrested a 38-year-old security guard for making a hoax bomb call to the police control room in Chennai threatening that a bomb would explode at the
Independence Day parade venue on the secretariat premises in which
Tamil Nadu chief minister
Edappadi K Palaniswami was participating.
The accused has been identified as Maharaja alias Mariraja, who is working in a private security firm here. He is hailed from Tirunelveli, police said.
Around 8:00am, the police control room in Chennai received a call from a mobile number. The caller claimed that a bomb had been placed on the secretariat premises and that it would explode before the chief minister hoisted the national flag.
The man said he had planned to murder the chief minister and cut the call. The caller switched off the phone after that.
The police control room traced the location of the caller to Coimbatore and alerted the city police. A police team went to the address with which the mobile number was registered. However, the number did not belong to the house owner even though it was registered in his name and address.
Later, when the phone was switched on, the police tracked the movement of the caller and arrested him.
Police said Mariraja had submitted several petitions seeking the intervention of the government to resolve a personal problem he was facing. However, since no action had been taken on his petition, the accused had planned to make a
hoax call to get the attention of the authorities.
The police registered a case against him under sections 506 (criminal intimidation), 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) and 294(b) (recites obscene words) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
