Aditya Rao was arrested in 2018 for making a hoax call to the Bengaluru International Airport

A man identified as Aditya Rao, a native of Udupi who was arrested in 2018 for making a hoax call to the Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL), surrendered at the Bengaluru police headquarters on Wednesday morning, claiming responsibility for planting a bag with explosives at the Mangaluru International Airport (MIA).

The police have taken him into custody for further questioning. Rao has reportedly confessed that he had placed the explosives at the Mangaluru airport on Tuesday as he was “frustrated.”

Habitual hoax caller

The Mangaluru police were on the lookout for this habitual hoax caller. Soon after the incident, they had verified CCTV footages and begun search for Rao, but he had managed to escape to Bengaluru in a truck.

Rao worked as a cashier since December 14 in a popular bar and restaurant in Balmatta in Mangaluru. He had not come to the restaurant for the last few days after getting his salary, a representative of the bar told mediapersons.

Also read: What happened at Mangaluru airport was a farce: Kumaraswamy

Rao was arrested in 2018 in connection with two cases of threat calls made to the BIAL. The first case was about call made on August 20, 2018, informing about a bomb in the parking area/lobby. The other case was regarding two calls made on August 27, 2018, about explosive substance in six flights. The cases were registered in the BIAL police station. He had served a nine-month sentence and got out on bail.

The police are now questioning him as to how he prepared the IED and the motive behind his action.

Also read: Bringing disgrace to police amounts to treason, Joshi tells Kumaraswamy

In a tweet, Mangaluru Police Commissioner P.S. Harsha said “Mangaluru city police investigation team is flying into Bengaluru shortly to investigate the developments in connection with MIA case. the team will question the suspect and will initiate further necessary legal action.”