New Delhi, May 30: Around 2pm on May 23, Delhi police got an anonymous call from Afghanistan to warn them of a bomb-maker in the capital.

An Afghan national living in Jamianagar in south Delhi was a bomb maker, the police control room was told. The anonymous caller, who warned of a terror attack, also gave the suspect’s address.

Police and intelligence officials rushed to Jamianagar. “We cordoned off the area and arrested him. But what surprised us was that he didn’t try to run away or resist arrest,” a police official said.

The 20-year-old Afghan was interrogated over three days, but the police found nothing to link him to any terror plot. What they found was that he had come to India in 2007 on a two-month visa to find work, but had stayed on in the country illegally.

“His only offence seems to be that he is in India illegally,” an official said, adding the police were trying to trace the caller. The force receives about 20 hoax calls a day, he added.

The youth, who earns a living as a guide for Afghans who come here to work, told the police he lost his passport and other documents after arrival. He approached the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for refugee status to stay on here, but has yet to get it. Seven months ago, he married a girl from Uttar Pradesh.

He has been arrested under the Foreigner’s Act for staying in India without valid papers and could be deported.