The 'deadly' courier arrived from Indore on Friday in four plain envelopes
No more do hoax calls really rattle the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE); they have become almost a regular feature. But the nation’s financial nerve centre was shaken to the core by four innocuous looking envelopes it received on Friday.
Seeing that they contained blank pages, the BSE authorities went into a tizzy, fearing the worst - a biological or chemical threat, such as the anthrax.
The BSE staff notified police immediately, and the latter, taking no chances, sent all four envelopes for forensic testing.
“It could be any kind of biological or chemical threat. We instantly sent the envelopes to the forensic laboratory in Kalina,” said deputy commissioner of police Brijesh Singh. Sources said that the cops also feared that it could be an anthrax attack.
All four letters were sent from an address in Indore. The BSE address was scripted on all the envelopes in an almost illegible handwriting, said police. “We are trying to track down the sender,” said Singh.
The forensic lab is expected to give its report in a few days.
All four letters landed at the BSE within a couple of hours of each other. Before informing the police, security personnel at the stock exchange had opened the letters.
“We are taking this matter very seriously. We are also trying to collect the fingerprints on the envelopes and letters to see if it can help us in investigations,” Singh said. When DNA contacted BSE officials, they refused to comment.
The BSE has always been a preferred target of terrorist outfits. Recently, a terror suspect arrested by Uttar Pradesh Police, confessed during interrogation that he and his associates had gone to survey vital installations and found BSE to be one of the softest targets
The security at the BSE has been breached only once: during the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai. A powerful bomb kept in the boot of a car, parked inside the BSE, had gone off, killing 84 people and injuring 218.
No comments:
Post a Comment