Court proceedings have been disrupted on several occasions in the past few months because of these fake threats.
On Thursday, at about 10 am, the family of a chief metropolitan magistrate received an anonymous call which warned that bombs were planted in the complex and could go off at any moment.
The call came to the Judges Quarters in Marredpally after the magistrate left home for court. The family alerted the magistrate, who in turn informed the police.
“We dispatched bomb disposal teams and checked the premises thoroughly for about one and half hours, but found nothing,” said the Nampally Inspector, Mr Umendar. “We traced the hoax call to a phone booth in Mehdipatnam.” In March, a similar bomb threat sent the police on a tizzy for three hours. Another hoax call was also received in March. In February too, a similar call created panic. Last year, the court received hoax calls in July and then again in August.
The complex has 35 court halls and every time a bomb threat call is received, the bomb disposal teams of the City Security Wing have to search the entire building with sniffer dogs, metal detectors and other equipment. None of the anonymous persons have been traced so far as they made the calls from coin-operated telephone booths.