As the ICICI bank administrative staff peered at the cheque picked up from a drop-box at one of its branches, they must have virtually felt a time-bomb ticking away on their hands! For the cheque-leaf had a threat scribbled all over it, that the bank's administrative office will be bombed on May 29.

The initial disbelief over, the staff hit the panic button and the administrative office, off M G Road, was vacated in no time -- including the staff and their vehicles.

Though the explosion was ‘slated’ for Tuesday, the bank security staff didn’t want to take any chance.
Result: With the entire staff on the pavement, it was a virtual melee on the road. The Citibank cheque-leaf in question was later traced to Pushparaj Naik, a software engineer residing at Amarjyothi Nagar near Nagarabhavi in Vijayanagar. Surprisingly, the bank, at whose Kothi Bande branch drop-box the cheque was found, at 10.15 am, initially sought to keep the entire issue secret, the police allege.

The Ashok Nagar police station, in whose jurisdiction the ICICI administrative office falls, was not informed of the threat till 3.45 pm.

This despite the fact that the cheque even bore threats to the RBI office (“on June 1”) and the BMTC bus station on Double Road two days later!

The police, in fact, arrived at the bank on their own (after an alert from the control room) and even had to take the bank authorities’ permission to enter the premises, at around 3.45 pm. By the time the bomb squad took over the operations it was 5.10 pm.

But bank officials were cagey about their ‘delayed response’. All they would say was that “our security staff was conducting mock drills”. Further prodding was met with a stony “you-can-talk-our-Mumbai-corporate-HQ” dodge.

Techie’s version
When Deccan Herald managed to talk to Nayak, who is likely to be questioned by the police, he said the cheque leaf had been dropped by him at the Kothi Bande ICICI branch in early May.  “I was supposed to pay Rs 10,000 towards my ICICI credit-card account. Since I live at Nagarabhavi, I dropped a Citibank cheque-leaf for the amount in favour of ICICI at the Koti Bande branch. It's nearly 20 days and I don't understand the turn it has taken,” he said, suggesting the bomb threat was none of his doing.

Ashok Nagar police are still baffled as to why the cheque took so long to land at the administrative office. Courier company officials are also being questioned.

“We can’t afford to take anything lightly. However, we will give protection to the bank premises on Tuesday, and then a thorough investigation will be conducted,” said a senior police officer said.