Chennai: A Coimbatore man has been arrested for making hoax calls with bomb threats at the residences of actor Rajinikanth and former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa in Chennai. The accused has been arrested.

The Chennai police control room received a call from a man, who claimed that bombs had been placed at the two residences.

 Bomb squad was immediately sent to Poes Garden and after a thorough search of the premises, the officials deemed the phone call to be a hoax.

Police traced the call and identified the accused as Mohammed Ali from Coimbatore. 

Upon interrogation police said that they found that he suffers from mental health issues. However, further information is awaited.

Last month, a man who was under the influence of alcohol called up the police stating that he had overheard his wife talking to someone about bombing the Chennai Central railway station.

The call was allegedly made to put his wife in trouble for quarrelling with him.

In October 2018, the Chennai Police had received a hoax call stating there was bomb in one of the trains from a man, who was about to miss his train. The man claimed he had overheard someone speaking about it, but soon after realised that he had made the call from his own cell phone. The Vadapalani Police registered a case and arrested him.

In another instance, a 37-year-old man of Royapettah sent a fake bomb threat to Jodhpur trains posing as a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned terrorist organisation. The Government Railway Police (GRP), who arrested the man, said that he sent the message only to make it ‘sensational’.

The Egmore GRP Police sprung into action, traced Iqbal and registered a case. Iqbal was later arrested from Royapettah following subsequent inquiry.