Hoax call claiming terror attacks spreads panic in Howrah station

A hoax call from abroad in the cell phone of a student in Birbhum claiming that there will be an attack at Howrah Station sent the police to a tizzy on Wednesday evening. Police said that Debojyoti Sarkar, a resident of Birbhum, had received an anonymous call in his mobile phone. The caller told him that a person with AK-47 is sitting inside Howrah Station and he would open fire at any point of time.

Instead of getting panicked, Sarkar disclosed it to his parents and went to Mohammad Bazar police station. The policemen from the police station immediately passed the information to the officers of the Government Railway Police (GRP).

A large contingent of police led by senior GRP and RPF officers initiated a search operation in Howrah Station. Security in the station and its vicinity was tightened up. The dog squad was found busy frisking the area and policemen kept watch on the movement of the people. But the police had a hard time as it was difficult to find out a person out of thousands of people entering and leaving the busy station at a time.

However, the police didn’t find anything despite of searching the entire station premises. Later on Wednesday bomb scare broke out at Gariahat Bus stand after an unclaimed bag was found from the spot. The area was cordoned off and the bomb disposal squad of the city police rushed to the spot.  But nothing apart from clothes were found from inside the bag.

In another incident, people were panicked and found searching a safe place after hearing a loud sound. Everyone had thought that it was a sound of firing. But later it was found that tyre of a car had burst and it led to the panic outside a Metro station.