An Indian student at the University of Missouri, Rolla has been accused of making terrorist threats and other felonies following a bomb hoax and anthrax scare recently in the campus.

Authorities have charged 22-year-old graduate student Sujithkumar Venkatramolla with these offences. However, the anthrax scare proved nothing more than a bag of powdered sugar.

Venkatramolla was charged with two counts of first-degree assault of a law enforcement officer and one count each of armed criminal action, resisting arrest, false report of a bomb threat and making terrorist threats, said Phelps County prosecutor Courtney George.

The student was not said to be doing academically well and allegedly depressed over his grades.

The incident is said to have started in the early hours of Wednesday morning around 2:30 am when Venkatramolla walked into the engineering building waving a paper bag and holding a knife saying that he had a bomb and anthrax. When police confronted the student and asked him to drop the knife, he refused and was shot with a stun gun.

He was taken to the country regional medical center for de-contamination and some 23 others in the building were quarantined. Venkatramolla was subsequently taken to a police holding facility in Rolla.