Gurugram, Mumbai and Bengaluru police went on a wild goose chase, and security was stepped up in the city, after the Gurugram police control room received a call that bomb blasts would be carried out in Mumbai. After an investigation, police discovered that a Bengaluru-based senior software engineer, working with Infosys, made the hoax call. The entire episode unfolded at 11.15 pm on Thursday when Rahul Tiwari, a resident of Gurugram's Sector 45, received a call from an unknown number. Tiwari attended the call, but since the caller asked for a man named Abhishek, Tiwari hung up assuming the person dialed a wrong number. When Tiwari received another call from the same number, he was frightened. The caller said: "Assalaamualaikum, Inshalla is baar Mumbai main blast honge (there will be a blast in Mumbai)." Tiwari disconnected the call and informed Gurugram police control room. The information was shared with senior Gurgugram officers. Soon after, the Mumbai police and Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) were informed. The city police was asked to take necessary precautions. With civic elections around the corner and some rumours of suspected railway sabotage bids doing the rounds, the city police was quick to tighten security. Meanwhile, Gurugram police launched their own investigation and inquired with Tiwari. "He (Tiwari) told us that he got a new number a few days back, but could not identify the caller. We traced the number to a person in Bengaluru," said a Gurugram officer. The Gurugram police alerted Bengaluru police and shared the number with them. "We kept calling the number, but it was switched off. We managed to speak to the person in Bengaluru and he identified himself as a senior software engineer," inspector Sudhir Kumar of Gurugram police said. "The engineer told us that the number on which he had called belonged to his friend, and since the receiver had disconnected, he tried to play a prank on him. We directed the engineer to meet an officer from Bommanohalli police station in Bengaluru and get his statement recorded," said Kumar. In his statement to the Bengaluru police, the engineer said following the hoax call, he was contacted by Mumbai police too. The engineer also furnished identification documents and was later let off.

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