Hyderabad:
Five anonymous phone calls, claiming that a bomb was planted in the Andhra Pradesh Secretariat that houses the Chief Minister's Office among others, sent the police into a tizzy.
The phone calls, however, turned out to be hoax. The calls were received between 11.30 am and 12.32 pm at the high-security government building, police said.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah was attending a function organised by the Mahila Congress in the Gandhi Bhavan when the calls were received in his office.
Despite this, he arrived in his office at around 12.40 pm and went straight into the fourth floor of the Secretariat to address a video-conference with district collectors.
The bomb disposal squad swung into action around 1 pm and conducted detailed checks for over two hours before concluding that the threat calls were a "hoax", they said.
This was the first time that the CMO received such a bomb scare, official sources said.
The telephone operator who received the calls immediately alerted the chief minister's staff following which the issue was brought to the Intelligence department's notice.
The "threat" was quietly communicated to Rosaiah a few minutes after the video-conference commenced in presence of a handful of ministers and top bureaucrats. However, Rosaiah, his Cabinet colleagues and the bureaucrats went ahead with their job, they said.
When top-ranking police officials did not reach the Secretariat following the bomb "threat", there was speculation that it could be a mock drill by security forces.
When contacted, neither the Chief Minister's Security Group nor the Intelligence Security Wing officials were willing to comment on the episode.
The phone calls, however, turned out to be hoax. The calls were received between 11.30 am and 12.32 pm at the high-security government building, police said.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah was attending a function organised by the Mahila Congress in the Gandhi Bhavan when the calls were received in his office.
Despite this, he arrived in his office at around 12.40 pm and went straight into the fourth floor of the Secretariat to address a video-conference with district collectors.
The bomb disposal squad swung into action around 1 pm and conducted detailed checks for over two hours before concluding that the threat calls were a "hoax", they said.
This was the first time that the CMO received such a bomb scare, official sources said.
The telephone operator who received the calls immediately alerted the chief minister's staff following which the issue was brought to the Intelligence department's notice.
The "threat" was quietly communicated to Rosaiah a few minutes after the video-conference commenced in presence of a handful of ministers and top bureaucrats. However, Rosaiah, his Cabinet colleagues and the bureaucrats went ahead with their job, they said.
When top-ranking police officials did not reach the Secretariat following the bomb "threat", there was speculation that it could be a mock drill by security forces.
When contacted, neither the Chief Minister's Security Group nor the Intelligence Security Wing officials were willing to comment on the episode.
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