Panic at Bengaluru airport after man’s bomb hoax call

BENGALURU: To teach his brother-in-law a lesson for divorcing his sister, a 35-year-old man set off panic at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) by making a bomb threat call to the police control room. The accused called the police control room (112) at 3 am on Friday and said that a bomb planted at KIA would go off in 50 minutes.

The accused, Shubhashish Gupta, is from West Bengal. He came to the city a few years ago in search of a job and had previously worked in the cargo section of KIA. “Gupta’s sister had a troubled marriage with one Deepak which ended up in a divorce. Gupta, who was upset with his brother-in-law, made the call in Deepak’s name,” a cop said. 

Accused called from his own number: Cop
“But he called the control room from his own phone which made the job of nabbing him easier for the police,” said the officer who was part of the investigations. The accused had warned the police that a time bomb which he had planted would go off at 3.50 am. The control room personnel immediately flashed the message to the jurisdictional police and also to other security agencies. 

The police along with the personnel attached to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), dog squads, bomb detection and disposal squads were pressed into service. The teams carried out a search of the entire airport till 7 am and declared the call a hoax. The Vidhana Soudha police had formed a team to nab the accused. They tracked down Gupta through the telephone number from which he had made the call. Gupta was arrested from a paying guest hostel at Shantinagar in Wilson Garden.