GHAZIABAD: A 15-year-old boy battling social and economic hardships at home and angry with the law-keepers made a series of hoax calls to police two days before Republic Day.The boy’s calls and emails saying he had planted bombs at eight places across the city had left the cops guessing, with the bomb-disposal squad, dog squad and fire brigade conducting checks at multiple places through the days. The boy, a Class XI student of an open university, was traced through the IP addresses used to make the Internet calls.During questioning, the boy has told police that he was inspired by the plot of a Bollywood thriller, A Wednesday, and made the calls “to teach the cops a lesson”. In the movie, the protagonist, played by Naseeruddin Shah, makes similar calls to the police and threatens to blow up public buildings if the cops don’t take action against a few hardcore terrorists.Police said the boy had been facing hardships in his family ever since he was child. His family comprises his widowed mother, a paralysed sister and an elder brother who is estranged from his wife.“The boy’s father had died six years ago and his family does not have the support of relatives. They live in a one-bedroom house and do not have a proper source of income. His sister is paralysed from waist down, and his mother is a homemaker. The only person who is doing some sort of job is his elder brother. But he has been making rounds of the police station and court because of a marital discord with his wife,” said an officer who had been investigating the source of the calls.He added that the boy had seen his brother being humiliated by the latter’s wife almost every day. Even the local panchayat, where the case of their domestic discord was being heard, did not support the family in their troubled times. “During questioning, the boy broke down and narrated his story. He has a lot of angst against the system,” the officer said.Police have not pressed any charges against the boy, considering the hardships the family is going through.SP (city) Shlok Kumar said the boy had been counselled and let off with a warning. “I hope he has learnt his lesson and understood that police are not enemies of people. The boy’s family did not have any inkling of what he was doing. He used the Wi-Fi connection at his home, a phone and a laptop for making the calls through Internet,” he saidFor two days prior to Republic Day, police had been receiving calls about the presence of bombs at eight places, including a residential building and a school in Kavi Nagar and Kotwali areas. Police have found that the residential building the boy had mentioned in his emails is located near his home and the school is where he had studied in the past.Explaining the method used to make the hoaxes, police said the boy had used Internet calling facility and sent emails to a senior citizen grievance redress portal. He had also sent threat mails to the Dial 100 website and even provided a phone number of a relative after omitting a digit. Police traced him through the mails he sent through his laptop by tracking the IP address.Following the hoax calls, an FIR had been registered against the unidentified caller under Section 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) of the IPC and under Section 66 (computer-related offence) of the Information Technology Act.

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