Hooghly prankster held for issuing 'al-Qaida' threats

Serampore: A 20-year-old confectioner with a fascination for al-Qaida was arrested from a small town in Bengal`s Hooghly district late Thursday night for allegedly threatening to blow up New Delhi`s Palam Airport.
If Sk Raju was a prankster, he was dead serious about it. He not only used fake names when issuing his threats, he also painstakingly collected IDs of other people to get SIM cards in their names. He succeeded in confusing security agencies for at least three months.
On March 18, he had called up the Spicejet office helpline and threatened to blow up the Delhi airport, say police. Security agencies tried to track down the caller but failed. Then, on June 1, Raju called up the Indigo Airlines Gurgaon call-centre with a claim to blow up an airport, leading police on a cross-country trail till he was picked up while closing his confectionery shop in Baranagar.
Bengal DGP Naparajit Mukherjee instructed Hooghly SP Tanmoy Roychowdhury to track the caller as the telephone number purportedly belonged to a person in Arambag. A team led by Arambag SDPO Raj Narayan Mukherjee traced the address. The reported owner, Hemanta Das, turned out to be a poor farmer who had no clue what the police were trying to ask him.
With the lead proving to be a dead end, police changed track and asked the cellular-service provider to provide them the tower location of the calls and the cellphone`s IMEI number. The tower indicated that the caller was somewhere in Baranagar`s Alambazar area and the IMEI number pinpointed Raju`s exact location. Police raided his shop and found that Raju used several SIMs.
11/06/11 Falguni Banerjee/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2011, Indigo Airlines Jun 2011