Cops launch search as man flees on being stopped at Metro

Police are searching lodges and other places and tightened vigil in the city Tuesday after a man gave the slip to security personnel at the Metro Railway Station here on being questioned after a metal detector sounded.

Metro Rail officials said the man, dressed in kurta-pyjama and sporting a skull cap and a scarf around his neck, tried to enter the station on Monday evening.

As soon as he did so, the metal detector at the gate beeped.

The private security personnel deployed by the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited stopped him and a checking device made a loud noise when it was scanned around his waist,officials said.

As they were questioning him, other passengers started walking in and demanded that the checking be expedited.

In the melee, the man, said to be in his 50s or early 60s, fled, officials said.

Security personnel claimed he tried to enter through another gate and even offered a bribe to a house keeping staff to take his bag inside but the woman refused.

BMRCL officials refused to comment on the second incident, saying police were investigating the case.

BMRCL chief public relations officer B L Chavan told PTI that the metal detector at the gate beeped when the man tried to enter. There were also other passengers.

The metal detector showed something around his hip and he was asked to reveal that, Chavan said.

"By the time other people walked in. They wanted to go without being frisked. So our security people stopped them and scanned them. By the time (others were frisked), this man had walked out," he said.

Deputy commissioner of police Ravi D Channanavar said searches were going on at lodges, hotels and other places such as railway station and bus-stands.

The police officer asked people not to pay heed to rumours.

He also appealed to the people to immediately call police whenever they come across anybody or anything suspicious.

Channanavar said the police took up the case following a complaint from the private security company whose personnel are deployed at the station.

Police are maintaining tigil vigil in the state following the blasts in Sri Lanka that killed over 250 people on Easter Sunday.

The Sri Lankan Army chief had revealed in a recent interview that some of the suicide bombers who carried out the country's worst terror attack visited various parts of India, including Bengaluru, Kashmir and Kerala for "some sort of training" or to "make some more links" with other foreign outfits.

Nine suicide bombers, including a woman, carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and three luxury hotels in Lanka on April 21, killing over 250 people and injuring more than 500 others.