

Agra: A team of Agra police on a visit to Tamil Nadu to obtain custody of an alleged hoax caller, who had threatened serial blasts in the Taj city during the local Ram Barat festival (October 8-10) as a revenge for Dadri lynching, had to come back empty-handed — but not without an important lesson. The official communication as well as a copy of the FIR that Agra police had sent to their TN counterparts to this effect was in Hindi which no one understood in Vellore police station. As a result, they were denied the custody of the criminal. From the next time, they say, English will be their language of communication in dealing with non-Hindi speaking states.

According to police, they received a hoax call on October 7, just a day before the biggest Ramlila of north India, where the caller claimed to have planted bombs at the venue. A high alert was sounded and subsequent searches proved that the call was hoax. The festival went off peacefully.

Last week, Agra police received an intelligence input that the hoax caller, who had made several such calls in the past and was wanted by cops in several states, had been arrested by Vellore police in Tamil Nadu a few days ago.

A team of Rakabganj police station from Agra was dispatched to Vellore to obtain his custody. However, they had to come back empty handed because of a language divide.

A cop who was part of the team sent to TN told TOI , “The FIR lodged at Rakabganj police station was in Hindi. The entry about the hoax call in our daily register too was in Hindi. The police team showed these documents to Vellore police who failed to understand what has been mentioned in the FIR.”

Superintendent of police (city) RK Singh said that the visiting team also wrote an application seeking his custody in Hindi. As the magistrate in Tamil Nadu couldn’t understand the language, they refused to give the custody. “We will get the FIR translated into English for the TN police. A warrant B in English will be issued to get the custody of the criminal from the magistrate here,” he added.

“The man had the multiple SIMs which were used make similar threatening calls to Lucknow, Ajmer, Agra and various other cities. He was talking in some South Indian language and told cops that he is a cancer patient,” the SP (city) said.

Vellore police special branch inspector Lok Nathan told TOI that a man named Hamid Khan has been arrested and more than three dozen SIMs have been recovered from him. “The man is in Vellore jail presently and investigations are on,” he added.

