New Delhi, June 29: A 16-year-old boy who made 1,400 hoax calls to Delhi police in the past 15 days was tracked down last evening.

But the cops couldn’t send Rakesh (name changed), some of whose calls at 100 were about major fires and robberies, where they wanted to — Tihar jail.

Under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, offenders below 18 can only be sent to state-run juvenile homes.

“He had given us a tough time in the last 15 days and made our lives miserable. We wanted to send him to Tihar but could not do so,” one officer said.

The teen, who hails from Bihar and works with his father as a day labourer, has told cops he loved to talk to the women who normally take calls on the helpline.

“He told us he wanted to talk to the women. After making the calls, he used to switch off his cellphone, making it difficult to track him by pinpointing the location. He had made a hoax call just five minutes before he was picked up,” the official added.

Rakesh was caught after his number was put under continuous surveillance for some time.

Delhi police are no stranger to fake and prank calls, though they concede this was the first time someone had made so many of them.

But this isn’t a one-off -case involving a teen, highlighting the problem of misuse of technology by a gadget-savvy generation. Last month, an 18-year-old made a prank call saying there was a bomb in a cinema hall. He was arrested soon and confessed he was upset as his girlfriend had gone to the same hall to watch a movie without him.