The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Suspect’s sketch: ‘advisory’ calls flood police

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Saturday, Sep 01, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Suspect’s sketch: ‘advisory’ calls flood police

Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD: The response was incredible, but the clues insignificant.

Within 24 hours of releasing sketch of twin blasts suspect and appealing to people for alerts about him, city police received over 300 telephone calls. Interestingly, most of them were irrelevant and of advisory nature.

City Police Additional Commissioner (Crimes) M. Punna Rao, who appealed to the public on Thursday evening to pass on information on his mobile phone about the suspect, continued to get calls till 4 a.m. the next day. More or less same was the situation of Additional DCP B.V. Chander Rao.

“Only problem was that most of the callers did not have any specific information about the suspect and were saying things like I saw him in a bus … train,” Mr. Rao said. Agreeing that the response was tremendous, he said telephone calls came from all parts of the country, including Kochi, Bhopal and other interior places.

There were too many suggestions and ideas on how to hunt down the culprits. “Probably, the suspect tonsured his head after triggering the explosions. Why don’t you release his sketch without hair on the head or without moustache?” was one such advice.

The Additional Commissioner also received calls from Indians living in America. Those NRIs were worried about their children studying in Hyderabad and enquired about the security situation . A good number of callers sympathised with the families of the victims. Though attending to so many calls was exhausting, Mr. Rao said he was happy at the response from citizens.

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