Chandigarh's Elante Mall evacuated after bomb alert; turns out hoax call

The police on Monday received a call about a bomb being placed in the Elante Mall in the city but a thorough search revealed that there was no bomb in the premises.

"Today at 1.06 pm, we received a call about the information of a bomb being placed in Elante Mall. On receiving the information, we evacuated the mall and our team reached there and we conducted a thorough search of the premises," Vineet Kumar, Superintendent of Police, Crime, Chandigarh said.

"After four hours of thorough sanitization, we have not found any objectionable item. We are reopening the mall. We will arrest the caller as it was a hoax call regarding the presence of the bomb. We're in the process of registering a case. We will prepare a full report on the incident and review it," he added.

The Elante Mall office issued a release about the safety of the people present in the mall and urged the general population to maintain calm.

"There was a report of an unclaimed object which could have been a bomb hoax, at our mall. All the people, including the shoppers and staff members, are absolutely safe. We do understand the difficulties each of our customers has faced and would appeal to the shoppers and the public, in general, to remain calm and help restore normalcy," the mall said in a release.