Team Herald
PANJIM: Attempt to get public attention by creating panic proved costly for a man from Banda town in Sindhudurg district (Maharashtra).
The person, whose name is kept under wraps, had approached a vernacular media house with a bag claiming it contained documents with names of Phulwana suicide bombing mastermind Jaish-e-Mohammed and other terrorists.
He was soon taken to the Goa police and Anti Terrorist Squad swung into action. The man revealed to the police team that he spotted the bag near BSNL office in Bambolim. However, after his extensive interrogation and verification of the documents handed over to them, the police ruled out any terror links.
Inspector General of Police Jaspal Singh told Herald that the man created a false story in a bid to gain attention. “He is out of job and wanted to get attention and be in good contacts… He tried to mislead everybody and on verification we found that he portrayed a false story,” he said.
The department will now move the Executive Magistrate with an application seeking to impose a penalty on the man and obtain an affidavit for his good behaviour.
Details shared by the police reveal that the man told the police that on opening the bag, he found Goa maps and several documents in it some of which were written in Urdu language.
“The documents mentioned that thickly populated areas (in Goa) should be on target as well as the religious institutions. It also had photographs of the military camp in Bambolim and Dabolim airport. In one document, it was written to take revenge for banning some terrorists in Uttar Pradesh,” said an officer. These documents also had mention of Phulwana attack’s mastermind, creating panic.
The man also claimed to the police that he had in fact seen around eight bags at the spot. However, none of the remaining bags were found. He was interrogated for almost the entire day while another team searched the place. The police team said that he had taken print outs of the documents and photographs from the computer and planted the bag.
