An April Fool prank pulled off by a FM channel in city created a “panic” atop historic Nandi Hills on Sunday morning.
Around 6,000 plus “fools” gathered on Nandi Hills in Chikkballapur, 54 km from here, believing the FM channel. The channel had announced the entire last week that top stars from Bollywood, including Priyanka Chopra, Bipasha Basu and Katrina Kaif, will be landing atop Nandi Hills to inaugurate the hilltop studio of the FM channel.
There were north Indian families, college students, software engineers, couples and even villagers from Chikkaballapur and Shidlagatta, which are situated close to the hill.
Needless to say, no stars landed on Nandi Hills, only the “fools”. The only beneficiary of the prank was horticulture department which made `70,000 in three hours by entry and parking.
Fans from Bengaluru, Tumkur and Mysore started gathering atop the hills as early as 3 am on Sunday and they waited on the road in their vehicles for the gates to open. When the gates were opened at 6 am, the horticulture officials who take care of hill top were surprised to see large crowd in the early morning. But their excitement withered after the horticulture officials clarified that no such descending of any stars is happening without their notice.
As the sun rose, the crowd started swelling. On a regular Sunday, the hilltop receives close to 4,000 visitors. Since large number of visitors turned in a short-time, there was traffic chaos on Nandi Hills. Congestion were reported at the curves of the Hills and civil police had a tough time to manage crowd.
Special horticulture officer Murgod said for any kind of function on the hills requires special permission from the government. “For instance, you need clearance from information department to shoot a film at Nandi Hills. In fact, we started getting inquiries about filmstars landing atop Nandi Hills on Saturday. We also checked with the police, but the police too said there was no such information,” Mr Murgod said.