- Red Fort received a bomb threat call, prompting security checks and sanitisation efforts
- Police declared the bomb threat hoax following thorough inspections of the Red Fort area
- The threat comes months after a deadly vehicle-borne IED blast near Red Fort Metro Station
The Red Fort in Delhi received a bomb threat call, prompting a security response and a thorough sanitisation of the premises, officials said.
According to officials, the caller phoned the Mumbai Police Control Room on Friday and threatened to blow up the Red Fort. The officials in Mumbai immediately alerted the Delhi Police Control Room - which informed the North District police.
After carrying out necessary checks, the police declared the bomb threat a hoax.
The bomb threat comes nearly eight months after 15 people died and over a dozen were injured in a high-intensity vehicle-borne IED blast near the Red Fort Metro Station. Umar-un-Nabi, a Kashmiri doctor working at Al-Falah University in Faridabad, near Delhi, was driving the Hyundai i20.
The incident took place on a day when 2,900 kg of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, were found just 50 km from the capital, in neighbouring Haryana's Faridabad. Sources said that Umar reportedly panicked and triggered the blast after investigators arrested two key members of the module - Dr Muzammil Shakeel and Dr Adil Rather - and seized the explosives.
The other key accused in the case were identified as Kashmir residents Muzaffar Ahmed Rather, Mufti Irfan Ahmad Wagay, and Uttar Pradesh's Shaheen Saeed. Some of them also worked at Al-Falah University. The accused were part of a "white-collar" terror module linked to Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group, that was busted just before the Delhi blast.
9 with links to Pak's ISI arrested
In May, nine men with links to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim were arrested for planning attacks in Delhi, Mumbai, and other parts of the country.
According to the Delhi Police's Special Cell, the accused were tasked to attack "vital installations and security personnel". Nuclear facilities, airports, railway stations, and power plants were on their list, sources told NDTV.
