NEW DELHI, Aug 9: Indian security officials were in a tizzy on Saturday over how a lookalike of Shipping Minister Shatrughan Sinha managed to gain unfettered access into the heavily guarded parliament complex, reports said.

The deputy speaker of the lower house, P.M. Sayeed, called a meeting of security officials to investigate how Balbir Singh Rajputh, a transport company owner, managed to fool the guards at the behest of a television channel.

The Hindi news network Aaj Tak showed Mr Rajputh walking nonchalantly into the tightly guarded parliament Friday talking on his mobile phone, without any guard frisking him.

Mr Rajputh was also shown shaking hands with security guards and being photographed by the media just outside the main entrance to the lower house.

“I walked around the place without anyone suspecting anything,” he told Aaj Tak afterwards.

“I could have had a bomb, which I could have planted and no one would have known. This is a shameful lapse in security,” said Rajputh, who was dressed exactly like Sinha with a pair of sunglasses.

Balbir Rajputh also managed to get past guards by imitating the famously gravelly voice of Sinha, a popular Hindi film actor who belongs to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s party.

Reports said Mr Rajputh was put up to the stunt by Aaj Tak after earlier making his way into parliament’s high-security Central Hall by accident.

After Rajputh stumbled into the Central Hall that time, parliament staff reportedly asked him to take Sinha’s place in the lower house.

Just as security officials were studying Rajputh’s breach, guards were thrown into frantic action on Saturday when an anonymous caller said a bomb had been planted in parliament.—AFP