Two teenagers were arrested in Uttaranchal on Saturday for making hoax calls about planting of a bomb at the India Gate, a day after police picked up two boys in New Delhi for keeping them on tenterhooks with false messages.
The duo, aged 15 and 17 and studying in Class 10 and 12 respectively, were arrested after Uttaranchal police traced the phone number from which the call was made to their house in remote Paukhal village in Tehri-Garhwal district.
They had made two phone calls last Sunday to the Anti-Terrorist Squad headquarters in Mumbai claiming that an explosion will rock India Gate at around 12 pm, triggering a massive search of the historic monument.
The call turned out to be a hoax after the search and both Mumbai and Delhi Police then launched an investigation to track the caller. Though Mumbai Police found out that the call was made from Uttaranchal, they could not track the caller immediately as the number was incomplete.
They then informed their Uttaranchal counterparts who soon located the exchange from which the call originated and after a tedious week-long search zeroed in on the phone number, a senior police official said.
Superintendent of Police (Dehradun) Biswajeet confirmed the arrest and said the duo has been sent to a remand home.
"They thought they will never be caught as Paukhal is a remote area. They have told us that news reports on television channels about hoax phone calls prompted them to make the phone calls," he told PTI in New Delhi.
