New Delhi: Teenager held for making hoax call to IGI airport

A 16-year-old boy who made a hoax phone call of a bomb being planted in a flight scheduled to depart from Delhi, has been apprehended from a village in Greater Noida, police said on Saturday.

The juvenile got the number of an Air India call centre located in Mumbai from a calendar and had made the hoax call just for "fun", said the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport DCP Dinesh Kumar Gupta.

The juvenile had on May 18 last made the call to the call centre in Mumbai saying that a bomb has been planted in the flight having scheduled departure from Delhi at 0400 hrs, he said.

The call created panic at the airport and the senior officers from the agencies concerned, including Delhi Police, swung into action activating security drills. A Bomb Disposal Squad carried out extensive check but the call turned out to be hoax.

A case under Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation was registered at IGI airport police station and investigation was taken up. The investigators through electronic surveillance traced the caller's location in a village near Haldwani Mor in Greater Noida, he said. A police team later apprehended the accused juvenile from the village yesterday. The SIM card and the mobile phone used by him in making the hoax call have also been found, added the officer.