Bomb hoax call in Mumbai-bound train triggers panic in MP's Khandwa

INDORE: Panic spread in Khandwa police station area after railway protection force (RPF) received information from their counterparts from Mumbai about a bomb being placed in Lucknow-Mumbai Pushkar Express train, a day before Diwali festival on Wednesday.
The district police force and government railway police conducted a joint combing operation in the bogeys of the train, which was stopped two kilometers away from the Khandwa station.
“We did not find any explosives on the train,” said Khandwa SP Navneet Bhasin.
The police were also investigating possibility of some of the passengers getting out of the train after pulling the chain in S2 compartment between Surgaon Banjari and Talwadia villages. The train stopped for seven minutes.
Investigators are exploring possibilities about the suspects getting down amid the flurry of police action following the call.
“It is too early to arrive at a conclusion before we have some concrete evidence at hand. We are checking the list of passengers in the compartment to check if anyone has got down,” the SP told TOI.
The Mumbai RPF had passed on information about a caller who claimed that some men were travelling with a bag of explosives in the general compartment, adjacent to the guard compartment.
The bomb detection and disposal squad was immediately pressed into action and the train made to stop away from the Khandwa railway station.
Every bogey and bag was later checked by the officials to ascertain that explosives were not being transported. Sniffer dogs were pushed into action as police personnel opened bags of passengers, making them jittery of the action.
As the train stopped on the tracks, the passengers got down and assembled on the sides of the track, while the combing operation continued.
Similar search was carried out at Khandwa railway station. The security personnel did not find anything suspicious.
“We are trying to trace the caller. Once we get the details, we can go into the bottom of the entire episode,” Bhasin said.
The train expected to reach Khandwa by 10.35am, was delayed by over one hour due to the search operation.