Indian police have arrested a man who sent people fleeing in panic when he sounded a false tsunami alarm in the southern city of Madras, a report said on Monday.
”The tsunami is coming, run, run,” Jackey (30), who has only one name, shouted on Sunday in a fishing cove along the city’s famed Marina beach where at least 200 died when the tidal wave hit last week.
People fled, fearing another monster wave, United News of India news agency reported.
But when nothing happened, an angry crowd roughed up the drunken man and handed him over to the police, the agency said.
The Indian government has said at least 9 479 people have died and 5 796 are missing after the tsunami triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia battered the coast of southern India and the far-flung Andaman and Nicobar Islands. — Sapa-AFP