Varanasi: Police in Varanasi are on high alert after they received two consecutive calls threatening to blow up temples in Hinduism’s holiest city.
The first call came to police control room on Friday evening threatening that the famous Sankat Mochan temple would be blown up. A similar call on Saturday threatened to blow up Vishwanath temple on the campus of Banaras Hindu University in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
According to reports, after receiving the call, the control room informed Lanka police station to take precautionary steps. In search operation police found nothing in the Sankat Mochan temple that had already witnessed a terror blast on March 7, 2006.
The Lanka station officer Sanjeev Mishra, who probes the matter, said that calls have been traced, and appropriate action would be taken in this regard, The Times of India reported.
During surveillance it was traced that the first call had come from Unnao, another town in the state. The phone number belongs to one Javed, resident of Bangar Mau area of Unnao district. When police contacted him, he said that he had gone to mosque to offer Namaj leaving his phone outside and someone would have made the call. Mishra said that his department informed the matter to Unnao police.
Regarding the second call, he said this number has also been traced and appropriate measures are being taken. He, however, refused divulge more details. The BHU spokesperson Rajesh Singh, when contacted, said that the university administration has no information about any threatening call.