Mumbai, May 24 (Agencies): In an incident that brought to memory the chaos that had been witnessed at Mangaluru's Infosys campus some years ago over 'bomb scare', six Kerala youths were detained on Monday May 23 after they were heard discussing about 'Bombay'.
It was their accent that landed six men from Kerala in the soup as some passengers in a CST-bound local train mistook their pronunciation of "Bomb-hay" as "bombs" and approached the RPF, a senior officer said here on Tuesday.
They were allowed to go only on Tuesday after the RPF and the ATS quizzed them thoroughly.
"These men were traveling in a Panvel-CST local train Monday. Some co-passengers heard them talking in a suspicious manner. One of the co-passengers got down at Kurla station and approached the RPF," said Sachin Bhalode, senior divisional security commissioner, Central Railway.
He said the train had left Kurla station by the time the police reached there.
"The message was given to the RPF, CST. The men were detained after they alighted at CST (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus)," Bhalode said.
They were subsequently handed over to the RPF, Vashi, as Panvel comes under Vashi division.
Explaining the incident, an RPF official said since the men didn't know Hindi or English, they were conversing in their local language.
"They were typing words like 'bomb' in their WhatsApp messages, which aroused suspicion of their co-passengers in the train," he said.
The men, whose names were not disclosed by the authorities, arrived in Mumbai on a train from Kerala Monday.
According to the official, they were supposed to go to Ratnagiri to attend a function at a madarsa (seminary) there.
"However, before heading to Ratnagiri, the men decided to go for sight seeing in Mumbai with their relatives. Hence they boarded the local train from Panvel," he explained.
The official said that besides RPF, the ATS also questioned the men, but nothing suspicious was found.
"They were allowed to go today and no case has been registered against them," he added.
It may be recalled that in 2013, the Infosys campus at Kottara in Mangaluru, a woman who called the company said 'bomb hai', sending the employees as well as the police into a frenzy. It was finally revealed that the caller was a Tulu-speaking woman who wanted to call someone in 'Bombay' and had wrongly dialled Infosys number instead.