A bomb threat to the office of Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer Satyabrata Sahoo sent Chennai police in a frenzy. However, they soon discovered that the threat was a hoax.
Chennai: The Chennai police found themselves running helter-skelter following an anonymous bomb threat to the office of Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer, Satyabrata Sahoo. However, the threat turned out to be a hoax as they recovered no suspicious item.
Police officials scanned the office of CEO Sahoo for any suspicious substance. This, after an anonymous letter was received warning that a bomb would go off.
Police said that the letter contained a brief sentence in Tamil that read, “bomb will go off”. Soon after, Fort police personnel inspected the premises and held investigations but found nothing.
Also read: Sri Lanka blasts: Kurunegala police arrest six others in connection with Easter Sunday attack
While the search was on, Satyabrata Sahoo was in a meeting with district electoral officers and returning officers ahead of the May 23 counting of votes polled in the Lok Sabha elections and assembly by-polls in the state.
The police are now on the lookout for the source of the message and are even checking CCTV footage to determine who sent
the letter.
The police told media that they didn’t want to take a chance and conducted thorough searches.
Such a scare is not the first, in the past month. Ever since the Easter Sunday blasts across Sri Lanka, exactly a month ago, neighbouring countries are on high alert.
Just after the Easter Sunday attacks, a lorry driver, Swamy Sundar made a call to police in Hosur and said that there could be terror attacks across eight states in India including the five southern states.
Also read: Lorry driver warns police of terror attacks in India, arrested for making hoax calls
He was arrested by the Bengaluru police who determined that the threat was fake.
However, the police didn’t want to take a chance and the Karnataka Director General of Police (DGP), Neelamani N Raju sent an alert to top police officials about the warning.
The Easter Sunday blasts across Sri Lankan churches and hotels took the lives of 250 people. Several arrests have been made and probe is still underway.
Also read: Bomb threat at houses of Rajinikanth, Jayalalithaa: Coimbatore man arrested for hoax call
Although the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the Sri Lankan officials believe that a splinter group from a local extremist group carried out the attack. Authorities also believe that all those linked to the terror attack are either dead or arrested.
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