Bomb hoax sends Bengaluru airport officials into tizzy; caller arrested

Tension had gripped the airport till the bomb squad, sniffer dog squad, officials of the CISF, airport authorities and police checked the premises and declared it a hoax

A few hours after the hoax call landed to the police control room threatening a time box has been fixed in the premises of Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), the Vidhana Soudha police have managed to arrest the hoax caller.

In preliminary investigations, police have found that the caller wanted to trap his brother-in-law in the case. But his luck ran out as police nabbed him.

The arrested has been identified as Subhasis Gupta, 32, a resident of a paying guest accommodation in KS Garden, Shanthi Nagar in Central Bengaluru and a native of West Bengal.

Around 3.27 am, the police control room (112) received a call from an unknown number. The caller spoke in Hindi informed the helpline staff that a time bomb has been fixed in KIA and it would explode in half-an-hour. The caller alleged that a person named Deepak Sonar has fixed the bomb. He further abused the staff and challenged them to catch Deepak Sonar and disconnected the call.

An alert was immediately made to the KIA and jurisdictional Kempegowda International Airport police station. Tension had gripped the airport till the bomb detection and disposal squad, sniffer dog squad, officials of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), airport authorities and the jurisdictional police thoroughly checked the premises and declared it a hoax.

Meanwhile, a complaint was filed with the Vidhana Soudha police by a police sub-inspector of Command Centre in the Commissioner of Police office. The police swung into action and arrested Gupta from near his PG with the help of the mobile number used to make the hoax call. During interrogation, police found that Sonar is Gupta's brother-in-law. Sonar had married Gupta's elder sister Ranjitha Gupta in 2004, but the couple developed disputes just a few days after the marriage.

Sonar has allegedly married another woman and a case is filed in the court regarding the same. Because of Ranjitha's marital issue, Gupta's two other sisters are not getting married. Hence, he wanted to take revenge on Sonar and made a threatening call to trap him in the case.

Gupta studied Diploma in Computer Science. He came to Bengaluru in 2019 and worked in a call centre. He lost the job during the Covid-19 pandemic. He joined as IT support staff in V Sure Informatics Pvt Ltd in KIA in August 2020. He was sacked by the company in March this year for his bad behaviour in the workplace. At present he is unemployed. The Vidhana Soudha police are investigating further.