Man held for hoax bomb call

During the early hours of Sunday morning, the Chennai police control room received an anonymous call from a person who threatened that bombs were planted at Pollachi railway station which would explode in sometime and claimed that they were planted by Sri Lankan refugees.

On being alerted from Chennai, a team of Pollachi West police led by Inspector Jayakumar and bomb squad sleuths carried out a thorough search for about three hours at the Pollachi railway station. After failing to locate any bombs, police confirmed it to be a hoax call.

 After inquiries, police traced and identified the caller to be R Rukmangathan, a ground nut trader from Suleswaranpatti near Pollachi. Inquiries revealed that he had made the fake bomb threat call to punish his friend K Sivaraj, 54 following a quarrel with him.

“While they both were consuming liquor, Sivaraj had spoken ill of Rukmangathan’s wife. This resulted in a quarrel between them. Then, Rukmangathan decided to take revenge on his friend and made the hoax bomb call by revealing his name,” police said.

 Sivaraj, a native of Perambalur had been Sri Lanka, before settling down in Suleswaranpatti.  The accused was produced in court and was remanded in judicial custody at Coimbatore Central Prison.