SHANGHAI: Shanghai police have arrested a man suspected of a bomb threat that was sent last Thursday to a large downtown department store.

The suspect, called Zhao Shufa, aged 29 and from North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, was arrested on Tuesday.

It is alleged that Zhao made the threat to Shanghai No 1 Department Store, located in East Nanjing Road, the most famous commercial pedestrian street in China.

He said he had placed explosives in the store and would set them off if he was not given a sum of money.

"Someone in the store called 110 to report the threat to the police," said Fang Jie, a spokeswoman at Shanghai Public Security Bureau.

"We launched our anti-explosives strategy immediately after the report."

According to a witness, the store, which usually opens until 10 pm, suddenly declared it would close at 5 pm and evacuated consumers shopping in the store and sales staff working there.

Soon after more than 100 police officers surrounded the store with more than 10 dogs and several anti-explosive trucks.

They cordoned off all the exits and prevented people from entering the building, said the witness.

The anti-explosives special force checked every counter in the store, storey by storey, helped by detectors and dogs, and finally concluded that there were no bombs.

It took the police five days to complete their hunt for the bomb suspect when Zhao was caught by officers in Ningbo Road in Huangpu District.

"After the preliminary investigation, Zhao confessed that he had once quarrelled with a salesperson at the store and so had a grudge, which made him invent the bomb threat to blackmail the store," said the police spokeswoman.

She continued that any person who fabricates, or intentionally communicates false bomb information to endanger public security, would be treated severely.

Zhao has been charged with endangering public security and has been taken into custody.

Shanghai has not been the only city to encounter a bomb threat this summer. South China's Guangzhou and Northeast China's Dalian both reported similar blackmail cases involving supermarkets.

Source: China Daily