Besides facing punishment for the criminal act, you may also have to cough up lakhs of rupees for mobilisation of police force and mental trauma faced by them.
Hoax callers, beware. Besides facing punishment for the criminal act, you may also have to cough up a few lakhs of rupees for mobilisation of police force and mental trauma faced by them.
Rajasthan Police is likely to lead the way with inspector general of police (Jaipur) Pankaj Kumar Singh busy drafting a civil suit against three accused, seeking damages of Rs five lakh each from them.
In two such cases, accused Azam Khan and Mohammed Anwar had thrown Jaipur cops into a tizzy after making crank calls about planting of bomb in busy markets.
"After all, police need to have a deterrent against such pranksters and they cannot be allowed to go scot-free after facing jail term of some months or maximum of two years," the 46-year-old Singh said.
In certain cases, the police, after arresting the hoax caller, found that the phone call was made to settle a personal dispute.
"You see, in the first case, where we have filed a civil suit against Wahiduddin (an accused in another case) seeking damages of Rs 1.15 lakh. He had made the call after purchasing the SIM card in the name of his son-in-law.
"All he wanted to do is settle personal scores with his son-in-law who was allegedly harassing his daughter," he said.
The similarity between the Khan and Anwar cases is that both of them stole mobile phones of their friends and made crank calls to the police about planting a bomb in Ram Gunj and Lal Kothi areas of Jaipur on April 25 and June 21 respectively.
Besides these, police are planning to file three more civil suits against such callers which is expected to act as a deterrent. Jaipur city has had nine cases of hoax calls this year.
"We can never take any threat lightly, especially after the May serial blasts last year. Such hoax calls create problems as most police personnel and officers join in detecting the supposed explosive material," Singh said, adding dozens of vehicles, fire brigades, dog squad, ambulances and bomb disposal squad have to be rushed to the spot.
The Jaipur police chief said the police was seeking only tangible costs from the accused. "May be we will also incorporate damages for mental trauma caused to policemen," he said.
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