Poor show: 20% success rate in tracing hoax calls in Capital

The Delhi Police have achieved a mere 20 per cent success rate in tracing hoax calls, with callers being identified in only three out of 15 cases received so far this year.

The hoax calls disrupted flight operations and led to lockdown of schools in the national Capital, throwing security officials into a tizzy. There is a committee that assesses hoax calls and keeps tab on the action-taken report.

“Hoax calls are received by the police control room on a regular basis but there are some major ones – with very high threat perception – which cause huge loss of time, efforts and money. They are marked separately in police records,” a senior police official said.

He added while 10 such calls were marked in police records in 2015, as many as 15 were reported so far this year. Of the 15 calls, three were successfully traced. 

But in all three cases, the calls were executed through mobile numbers, while the ones that could not be traced were executed through Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

Several senior Delhi Police officials claimed that VoIP calls could not be traced because the providers of the service were mostly based in foreign countries and it ttok longer time to get the details.

And also the numbers that flash in many of the cases turn out to be foreign numbers, in connection with which taking action is complicated in any case.

Kislay Chaudhary, cyber crime adviser to security agencies, said, “All VoIP calls, like ISD calls, are directed through the VSNL server. The protocol demands marking the call and requesting for the source, following which the IP address (if computer generated) or mobile number (for app-based calls) can be obtained.”  

“If the caller is from a foreign country, then legal restrictions are there. But if anyone says the calls can’t be traced, it is lack of will,” he added.

Of the 15 hoax calls this year, six were received in connection with flight – leading to disruption in services in around 19 of them – and the IGI Airport, one about bomb threat in Parliament premises and two led to hour-long lock-downs in two prominent private schools in the city.

In one of the three cases, in which the caller was traced, a South Delhi-based woman reported about bomb in a flight to get detained someone she had to settle scores with.

In another case, a 60-year-old man had threatened to carry out an attack at the airport, demanding the release of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNUSU) Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar. It later turned out that he wanted to frame his brother-in-law whom he held responsible for his sister’s disturbed married life.

In the third case reported in January, a mentally-challenged person called up the police and reported about a bomb in the Parliament complex. Callers were apprehended in all three cases.