New Delhi:
A hoax call about a bomb being planted in the New Delhi-Amritsar Swarn Shatabdi Express triggered panic on Friday and the train was stopped for about three hours disrupting rail services on the route.
The train was stopped at Narela soon after an anonymous call was received by Deputy Station Superintendent of New Delhi station that the bomb has been placed in the train.
Panic-stricken passengers were deboarded at the station and a thorough search was conducted jointly by Delhi Police and Government Railway Police personnel.
The train, comprising mostly business class travellers, left at 10.42 am for its onward journey, three hours after it was halted. The train had left Delhi at 7:40 am.
Investigation has been initiated into the incident, railway officials said.
Meanwhile, rail services on the Delhi-Ambala-Kalka and Delhi-Amritsar sections of the Northern Railways remained disrupted for around two hours stranding passengers. Trains to and fro Sonepat, Ganaur and other railway stations of the region were delayed due to the hoax call.
Sources in northern railway said that they were concerned about the spurt of such hoax calls.
Railways has been a witness to several such incidents in recent past, most of which has been reported either from northern railway or north central railway.
Security had already been tightened across these two zones after a live bomb was detected from a Delhi-bound train in Mathura about a month back.
The high-intensity sophisticated bomb was recovered from the sleeper coach of Delhi-bound Manikpur-Hazrat Nizamuddin Express at Mahoba railway station in Uttar Pradesh, triggering panic among passengers.