New Delhi: Delhi Police had not only to deal with the massive crowd, pick-pocketing and molestation cases during Anna Hazare's 12-day fast at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi but also a phone call threatening a blast at the protest venue.
"We were under tremendous pressure. We had sanitised the ground in the morning. But that call changed everything. We had to conduct searches again and the crowd was swelling as it was a public holiday. A leak would have meant a stampede," a senior police official said about the call received at the Delhi Police headquarters on Janmashthami day on August 22.
It was 10.35 AM that day when thousands of people were shouting slogans as Hazare was on the dais for an hour. A stampede was what police then feared if the news of the anonymous call got leaked.
Though police expected it to be a "crank call" to create mischief, fears of an explosion were accentuated as only that morning some drunkards had created ruckus at the ground, misbehaving with police and media personnel.
"If the crowd had got a whiff of our searches, we would not have been able to control anything and the loss would have been unimaginable. So we went in for discreet searches without raising any suspicion," the official said.
As police tried conducting searches, the official said, another group tried calling the number from which the call emanated but found it switched off. A case has been registered under Section 507 (criminal intimidation by an anonymous communication) of IPC and under relevant provisions of IT Act.
It was not just the hoax call, which was termed as a one-off incident by police, but there were also rampant cases of pick-pocketing and molestation cases - many of which went unreported. Even a video camera of news channel was stolenfrom Ramlila Maidan.
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