Mumbai: Chaos prevailed at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai's Colaba area after the hotel authority received a hoax bomb threat on Saturday. Police and the bomb squad swung into action after receiving the information from the hotel authorities. The bomb squad failed to find any suspicious item from the the premises of the hotel property.
Close to 13 years ago on November 26, 2008, the Taj Hotel in Colaba witnessed one of the biggest hostage situations and bloodshed in human history, after a team of 10 terrorists who sailed in from Pakistan laid siege to the property.
According to the Mumbai Police, the call to Taj's management was made by a young boy. When the police started investigating the number from which the call was made, it was revealed that it was a 14-year-old from Karad in Satara behind the hoax. The boy and his parents were taken into custody.
The boy, a ninth standard student, obtained the Hotel's telephone number from Google. He called Taj Hotel from his mobile and told the security should be beefed up at the back gate of the Taj Hotel, as two men wearing masks and carrying guns will be entering the Taj.
The police quoted the boy saying that he called the hotel after watching a series and a movie on television. His family had no information about the boy's actions. The boy and his parents statements recorded, said senior police inspector B.S. R. Patil.
Earlier on June 21, a man was arrested in Pune for sending threats via email to bomb Mumbai Mantralaya. According to the Police, Mumbai's Marine Drive police station received threats via email about a bomb placed in Mumbai Mantralaya. The security was beefed up at the place upon receiving the threats.
However, the investigation revealed that the threats were fake and the accused, who was detained in Pune's Ghorpandi area, has been identified as Santosh Shinde. As per sources, he allegedly sent this mail out of frustration as his son was not getting admission to the school. An official of Mumbai's Marine Drive police station said that the accused has been handed over to them by the Pune police and a case under Cyber Act was registered against Shinde.
In a similar incident, Police personnel on May 30 conducted a search operation at the Maharashtra government secretariat here after a caller, later identified as a farmer from Nagpur district, claimed that a bomb was planted on the building, which turned out to be a hoax call.
Meanwhile, the caller was traced to Nagpur in east Maharashtra who turned out to be a farmer who allegedly made the call to draw the attention of the administration to his repeated pleas demanding compensation for his acquired land, a Nagpur rural police official said.
'The farmer was detained within two hours of making the hoax call. He confessed to making the call and said that for a long time, he was worried about the compensation of the acquired land. But no one was listening to his pleas. He made this call to draw the attention of the government and the administration,' the official said.
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The farmer is identified as Sagar Mandhre (40). Mandhre had owned seven acres of land in Makardhokda area of Umred tehsil in Nagpur district. 'He sold some part of that land to a man while some portion was acquired by the Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) in 1997. The farmer told the Umred police that the WCL had not issued compensation to his acquired land,' the official said.
He said the farmer claimed that he was suffering from some serious bone disease and needs money for medical treatment. The farmer claimed that he had been trying hard since the last two decades to get the compensation for his land and written several letters to the administration, the official said.
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