By IANS,
New Delhi : A 32-year-old mentally depressed man was briefly detained Thursday evening for allegedly sending an email to the Japanese embassy here threatening terror strikes in a popular shopping area of south Delhi.
Sleuths of Delhi Police’s Special Cell picked up the unemployed man, whose identity was not revealed, from Gurgaon, a booming satellite town on the outskirts of the national capital.
“The accused is undergoing treatment for depression in a south Delhi hospital. He has told us that he was disturbed after his brother’s death in Japan,” a senior Delhi Police official told IANS.
The man was later let-off.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Japanese embassy in the capital’s highly secured diplomatic enclave of Chankyapuri had received an email threatening to carry out blasts in the Sarojini Nagar market. The embassy later forwarded the mail to Delhi Police.
The embassy Thursday closed its consular section and warned Japanese nationals in the country to avoid crowded areas.
“The consular section remained closed today. We are thinking of whether to open it tomorrow or not,” a spokesperson of the Japanese embassy told IANS Thursday when asked about the e-mail alert.
The information about the terror threat and the closing of the consular section has been posted on the website of the Japanese embassy, the official said.
“We received some information about the terror threat and we shared it with Indian authorities,” the official said.
The e-mail threat comes days after serial blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad killed over 50 people and left more than 200 injured.
Since Sunday, metros across the nation have reported a large number of hoax calls even as police found and defused 28 bombs in Surat.
The Sarojini Nagar market was targeted by terrorists in the Oct 29, 2005 bombing in which at least 50 people were killed.