Exchange making hoax calls?

Can a hoax caller be a high-tech telephone exchange itself? This is the question that is haunting Delhi police for quite some time now.

After the Mumbai blasts, Delhi police has been constantly receiving two to three hoax bomb calls on daily basis. Police simultaneously carry two drills. The first and the foremost reaction is to rush the police, dog squad, bomb detection squad, fire brigade and the ambulances and almost at the same time police tries to dig out as to who the callers are and from where the call was made.

At the police control room, there is a caller identification system that flashes the telephone number from where the calls have originated. The control alerts policemen to track down the caller. Since most of such calls are made from the public telephone booths, police still manage to nab some of the hoax callers and teach them a lesson.

But there have been cases when the cops at the control room find it impossible to identify the call as the system instead of flashing caller's telephone number display the word Janpath, making it impossible for the police to track down the caller.

Ajay Kumar, DCP police control room while confirming this snag said, "The error is not with our system, but it is the Janpath telephone exchange which has developed some snag where instead of flashing the caller's number, it flashes the name of the telephone exchange."

"We have on several occasions taken up the matter with the telephone department, but the problem has not been rectified till now," he explained.

When asked as to whether the identification system flashes exchange name instead of telephone number when call is made from any telephone number of the exchange, he answers, "No, it does not always happen. Sometimes the system flashes caller number and on some occasion it flashes the exchange name."

Although the police has put the ball in the telecommunication department's court, it is still to be established whether the exchange has developed some snag or is it a smart trick by a clever guy who has acquired the technique to hack the system!