High alert on festival eve, swift arrest in Noida
Mumbai spent the eve of Anant Chaturdashi on edge after a message sent to the city’s traffic police WhatsApp line claimed a network of 34 “human bombs” and 400 kg of RDX had been planted across the metropolis. The sender, invoking a Pakistan-based jihadi tag and alleging 14 infiltrators in the city, warned of mass casualties. The numbers were extreme, the timing brutal. One day before Ganesh Visarjan, when lakhs pour into the streets, any threat hits the city’s nerve.
Police treated the alert as real until they could prove otherwise. Nakabandis went up across arterial roads. Bomb detection and disposal squads fanned out to vital points—railway stations, bus depots, coastal stretches, and major immersion sites from Girgaum Chowpatty to Dadar and Versova. Officers in uniform and plainclothes swept procession routes while control rooms pushed out advisories asking people to avoid rumours and report anything suspicious.
Within hours, investigators tracked a suspect to Noida. A team under Police Commissioner Lakshmi Singh moved in with a SWAT unit and picked up a 50-year-old man, identified as Ashwani, from the Sector 113 area. After initial questioning and the standard paperwork for transit, he was handed over to Mumbai Police for a deeper probe. The device used to send the message and related digital material were seized for forensic imaging to preserve the chain of evidence.
The threat did not stop the city. On Saturday, September 6, the visarjan carried on through intermittent rain. Processions rolled, drums beat, and iconic mandals—including the Lalbaugcha Raja—moved through their routes under heavy security. The immersion day closed without an incident linked to the warning, and the city’s police force—stretched thin but steady—saw the festival through.
On paper, the WhatsApp note promised carnage on a fantasy scale, even dragging in a headcount of one crore potential victims. That kind of figure doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny, but it didn’t matter for the men and women on the ground. Mumbai has learned the hard way to treat every threat as actionable. The crime branch opened a case and began to stitch together a timeline: when the message was sent, which network it hit first, who had access to the account, which device, which SIM, and where the tower pings placed it.
For the public, two things happened at once: a visible blanket of security and a quiet effort to keep life normal. Traffic diversions were tightened around immersion points and chokepoints along procession corridors. Crowd managers and local volunteers were folded into the plan. Drone cameras watched over larger congregation areas. Coastal security units stepped up patrols. The aim was simple—control the ground while tracing the source.
Inside the security response and the road ahead
Here’s how a city like Mumbai moves when a message like this lands. First, the alert goes to a multi-agency war room—traffic and city police, crime branch, anti-terror squads, and specialized bomb squads. Critical sites get prioritized: stations on the suburban network, Metro interchanges, markets, hospitals, and key junctions along visarjan routes. Officers pull up past threat maps, CCTV grids, and crowd flow models made in the weeks before the festival. The system is built for surges—that includes reserve platoons and quick reaction teams that can move in minutes.
While boots hit the street, the digital side kicks in. Investigators secure the original message, log metadata, and isolate the device and account details. Even with end-to-end encrypted apps, there’s usable information—time stamps, user identifiers, SIM/IMEI, Wi-Fi or cell tower hits. If there’s a VPN in play, they try to peel it back. Service providers are served notices for subscriber details and IP logs. The process is methodical because every step could face scrutiny in court.
In the Noida arrest, the inter-state handover followed standard practice. Local police detained the suspect, documented the seizure of the device, and coordinated with Mumbai’s crime branch. Expect a forensic lab to image the phone, clone relevant data, and work through chat histories, deleted files, and app-level residue that often survives “delete for everyone.” If more people are involved, that trail—calls, messages, money, and movement—usually shows it.
What charges could a caller like this face? It depends on the probe. Hoax or not, messaging that threatens mass harm can attract serious sections of the Indian Penal Code for criminal intimidation and public mischief. If investigators find intent to terrorize or links that go beyond idle mischief, provisions under terror laws can come into play. Courts have treated festival-time threats as aggravated because they target dense crowds and strain emergency services.
All this unfolded against the biggest public gathering Mumbai sees all year. Ganesh Chaturthi runs for 10 days, drawing people from every corner of the city and beyond. The final day—Anant Chaturdashi—is a moving city in itself. Thousands of idols head to the sea and lakes, with crowds snaking through old neighbourhoods and wide new avenues. That scale is why the festival security plan reads like a city operations manual: mounted police, river and sea units, barricaded corridors, medical posts, lost-and-found counters, and relief lanes for ambulances.
There’s also muscle memory. Mumbai has lived through real attacks, including the 1993 serial blasts and the 2008 siege. It has also seen regular hoax calls around high-visibility days. The result is a default posture: treat it as real, balance public movement with checks, and keep messaging clear. On Saturday, that meant steady bulletins from control rooms, extra signage, public address systems at immersion points, and a simple ask—don’t circulate unverified forwards.
Digital threats have a pattern. They often mix big numbers, dramatic claims, and a borrowed terror label to create panic. Investigators look for the telltales: recycled language, spoofed identities, and the mismatch between claimed capacity and real-world logistics. In this case, planting 400 kg of RDX across 34 vehicles would demand money, procurement channels, safe houses, drivers, and timing—none of which can be magicked into place without traces. That’s why the first 24 to 48 hours—raids, interviews, and forensic work—are key to separating noise from genuine risk.
For the people managing the ground, the work is less glamorous but vital. Crowd pressure points—narrow bends, flyover ramps, and bridges—are managed with staggered barricades. Loudspeakers keep the flow moving. Traffic cops manually override signal cycles when processions cross big junctions. Volunteers from mandals act as the first line for crowd discipline. Medical and fire teams sit forward, not miles away. And yes, the weather matters. Rain can slow a procession and create slippery sections that need extra watch.
By late Saturday, the city had done the heavy lift: the visarjan concluded peacefully. No explosive finds tied to the message were reported by squads on the ground. The crime branch carried on with the case log: interrogations, device dump analysis, and a sweep for any copycat attempts. The arrested man’s motive—malice, mischief, or something in between—will be tested against digital evidence rather than guesswork.
If there’s a lesson for residents, it’s the old one. Report, don’t forward. If you see an unattended bag or a vehicle parked oddly along a procession route, call the helpline—100 or 112—and flag the nearest officer. Avoid crowding an area where checks are underway. Respect diversion signs even when they feel inconvenient. The cops on the cordon have already done a night shift before you reach your spot.
For the force, the work doesn’t end with the last immersion. There’s an after-action review that goes point by point: response times, communication gaps, choke points that flared, and equipment that didn’t keep up. That’s how plans get tighter for the next big day on the calendar. Mumbai’s safety net is built on these repetitive drills, not just the headline arrests.
Back to the message that kicked it all off. The idea was to rattle a city. It didn’t. The Mumbai bomb threat triggered a serious response, an arrest across state lines, and a festival that carried on under watchful eyes. It’s not a story of panic. It’s a story of a city that knows how to move when someone tries to freeze it with a line of text.
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