Thiruvananthapuram: The top brass of state police staged a mock bomb drill at their headquarters to test the city police’s preparedness in the wake of Sunday’s exchange of fire between police commandos and Maoists in Wayanad.

Around 3 p.m., an anonymous call that came to the landline of police headquarters at Vazhuthacaud warned of four bombs within the premises that were to explode by 4 p.m.

The message was relayed to the city police and in 10 minutes, hundreds of employees were evacuated. Two bomb squads stationed close to the premises were pressed into action.

Three suspicious boxes were recovered in a search using metal detectors from the spot raising fear that the hoax could be true.

The traffic from both directions was closed down in 10-15 minutes. The suspicious materials were closed in a bomb containment chamber and inspected. By 3.35 p.m, metal decoys were recovered, and that was when many realised it was a drill.