Odisha government had sounded a terror alert after the group disappeared from Bhubaneswar
Three men and two women detained in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam last night on the suspicion that they are terrorists may just be innocent tourists, police sources say.
The group was held on a request from Odisha, which believes that they vanished from a hotel in a suspicious way. They are all carrying Iranian passports, the police say.
Sources say the five were not able to communicate because of a language problem.
They are two couples and the son of one of them.
The Andhra police say if it turns out to be a mistake, it will apologise.
The police in Odisha said the five went missing from a hotel in Bhuvaneswar after being asked to produce their identity proof a day before Republic Day.
After being alerted by Odisha, the Andhra police stopped a Toyota car with a Delhi registration number yesterday and detained the five.
But after questioning them, the police are inclined to believe that they are regular tourists, say sources.
"The people detained by Visakhapatnam police were the suspected terrorists who fled Odisha on the night of January 25," Inspector General Crime Branch Arun Bothra said in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday.
The police in Visakhapatnam are now waiting for a team from Odisha to come and question the group about their apparent vanishing act from the hotel.
The car was tracked on CCTV footage from the Odisha hotel and from a check post at the Odisha-Andhra Pradesh border.
The Odisha government yesterday sounded a terror alert after the group disappeared.