Manila: A bomb threat forced Philippine authorities to evacuate the Department of Justice headquarters in Padre Faura St on Wednesday, but the anonymous call turned out to be a hoax.

According to authorities, a phone call from a person who refused to identify himself, was received at the Department of Justice headquarters in Padre Faura Street in Manila around 10am. The caller said that he had planted a bomb at the building and that it was set to explode in a few hours.

Not taking the warning lightly, the justice department ordered a lock down and evacuated all personnel out of the area. It asked a joint team of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Bomb Disposal Division and the Philippine National Police-Explosives Ordnance Division to conduct a search on the justice department complex for bombs.

“We brought in bomb-sniffing dogs and our experts did a thorough search of the premises, no bombs or improvised explosive device were found,” a police officer who refused to be identified said, adding that each of the buildings at the Justice Department were individually searched by the operatives.

With the area declared safe and police and NBI bomb units giving clearance, justice department employees returned to their workstations at around 1.30pm.

Causing alarm about the presence of a bomb is punishable under the country’s law against bomb pranks or hoaxes, Presidential Decree 1727.

The act punishes violators with imprisonment of not more than five years, or a fine or not more than P40,000 (Dh3,286) or both.

According to the NBI, the person who made the bomb threat had been demanding that visitation privileges to prisoners at the national penitentiary, the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in suburban Muntinlupa City, be restored.

The justice department had suspended visitation privileges more than a month ago as part of a far-ranging crackdown on NBP inmates after some of them were found to have had abused their freedoms.

During the crackdown, it was found that some prisoners, particularly the rich, had been dealing in drugs and were keeping items banned from prison premises such as firearms. The also had access to a spa and music recording studio among other amenities.

As a result of the crackdown, 19 of the wealthy inmates — who included convicted drug dealers, high profile thieves, among others — were segregated from NBP’s general prison population and transferred to the NBI detention centre at the Justice Department complex in Padre Faura, Manila.