Pathankot man vandalises SUV, plants bomb hoax to get it towed

Pathankot: Annoyed over an unattended SUV in front of his shop, a 36-year-old man planted a bomb hoax in Pathankot to get it removed, police on Sunday said.

The Punjab Police arrested Nitin Mahajan, a local resident, in the matter.

Police swung into action after it received information on Saturday that an abandoned SUV parked on Daki Road in Pathankot’s Balaji Nagar had been vandalised with its window panes shattered.

Some handwritten leaflets were found around the vehicle with threats of bomb blasts at government offices and schools in Pathankot in the next five days.

“100 men had entered India with 30 of them in Pathankot,” read the message, said police.

Pathankot Senior Superintendent of Police Suhail Qasim Mir said the leaflets, which also had ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ written on them, caused a panic in the area.

During interrogation, Nitin told police that he had heard some suspicious noise outside his house at around 4.30 am on Saturday.

From his balcony with a torch, he said, he observed four people damaging the windowpanes of the SUV and scattering leaflets around it, the officer said.

Since it was a sensitive matter, police conducted a detailed investigation in the matter.

Following investigation, it came to the fore that Nitin had himself broken the windowpanes of the SUV that had been parked in front of his grocery shop for the past two months, and also wrote the threatening messages, the SSP said.

The car belonged to one Suresh Kumar who had left it over two months ago, police said.

Nitin concocted the story to get the SUV towed by police, they said.

Pathankot district borders the Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Last month, police were put on high alert after a villager claimed to have spotted two suspicious men in a village here.

On June 12, two foreign terrorists were killed in a gunfight in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir.