(Top) The roundabout near Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium a day after the attack; relatives of a victim mourn in a village in North West Frontier Province. (Reuters)

New Delhi, March 4: The caller from Pakistan said his brother was planning to blow up targets in Delhi. Then he hung up.

Delhi police, their nerves already frayed after last year’s serial blasts, went into a huddle after a caller warned that a Lashkar-e-Toiba group, of which his brother was a part, was preparing the ground for an attack on India’s capital.

If the call is not a hoax, Parliament and India Gate could be the next targets.

Sources in Delhi police said the man, calling from a 0092 number — Pakistan’s country code — dialled the CBI control room last week saying he wanted to pass on sensitive information.

The caller, the sources added, said a few days back his brother had brought a group of youths to their home and checked out a CD on his computer that had maps and images of India Gate and Parliament among other well-known sites in Delhi.

The sources said the man, whose voice appeared to be of someone in his early 20s, seemed nervous but desperate to talk.

“The caller also said he had overheard them talking of carrying out blasts in Delhi. Asked why he was calling to alert Indian officials, he said he was doing it on humanitarian grounds since he didn’t want to see people getting killed,” said an official.

“We tried to get him to say where he stayed in Pakistan and what his background was, but he disconnected. He seemed in a hurry to just relate the information.”

When the CBI, in a confidential note, alerted Delhi police’s special cell, investigations revealed that a call from the same number had been made to the traffic police helpline the day before.

The caller, the sources said, told the same thing to the traffic helpline cop on duty and seemed desperate.

Delhi police officials, who get close to 20 hoax calls a day, seem to be taking these two seriously. In fact, till a couple of days back, a south Delhi police station prominently displayed a message regarding the call on its notice board telling officials to stay alert.

The message was later removed amid concerns that it might cause panic.

On February 28, Delhi police commissioner Y.S. Dadwal called a confidential meeting with all station house officers and senior officials of the force.

Sources said the calls were discussed at length during the closed-door session.

“We have to understand that there is a lot at stake. If there is another incident in India, the entire region will become a no-touch zone. With elections just a month away and with seven IPL matches scheduled in the city and the Commonwealth Games in 2010, we cannot relax. Look at what the attack (yesterday) has done to Pakistan. Now, no one wants to go there,” a senior Delhi police official said.

“We have to be extremely alert. Since this caller has been calling up helpline numbers listed on our website, we cannot take it lightly. We are trying to trace the call and investigate if there is any truth in it.”