Chandigarh Police was thrown into a tizzy on Tuesday evening after an engineering student called the Police Control Room to inform them that a Facebook friend of his from Australia, who had come to visit him in India, had been kidnapped from the Chandigarh airport and was being kept hostage in Sector 34.

After further investigation, however, it turned out to be an elaborate hoax allegedly perpetrated by the Facebook ‘friend’.

The student, a resident of Sector 40, came into contact with his Australian friend, Elina, on the social networking site Facebook.

As the interaction progressed, she informed him that she would be visiting India to meet him on December 25. But, on December 28, the student received a message on his phone from Elina stating that she had been kidnapped from the airport.

The youth panicked and called the police, who registered an FIR in Sector 31 police station. Inspector SHO Jaspal Singh said, “We traced the location of the mobile phone from which the student received the calls and messages. It was established that the number was not being operated in India.”

He added that when Elina video-conferenced with the student, she would turn off the lights and in a distressed state ask the youth for help and pretended she was being kept as hostage. The SHO, however, added that the girl made no ransom demands.