In an unprecedented turn of events, at least 15 schools in the city and on the outskirts, many of which are top international schools, received a common bomb threat through a blast of emails on Friday morning. The threats, which the police later declared as a hoax, triggered panic among parents, students, and school managements keeping police on their toes.
At first, the Bengaluru city police received panic calls from a couple of schools. But as more school managements checked their emails later in the day, the numbers kept rising. Police teams were moving from one part of the city to another while dog squads and bomb detection squads were pressed into action.
Manila Carvalho, principal of Delhi Public School, Bengaluru East, said that a flood of 140 mails from two email addresses reached the inbox around 11 a.m. They were sent to the email address listed on the school website. All the emails had the same text claiming that a powerful bomb had been placed in the school. The sender instructed school authorities to call the police to save lives. All the 15 schools which reported the emails by the end of Friday reported a similar trend: a large number of emails with the same text but from multiple email ids.
Fortunately, the threat was a hoax. All schools were searched and declared safe by the end of the day. All school premises that received the threat emails were evacuated and search operations were conducted.
School managements let off classes for the day and asked parents to collect their children home, without disclosing the exact reason to avoid panic. Even schools that did not receive the threat emails sent students back home.
Initially, schools that reported receiving the threat mails were in eastern and southeastern parts of the city. However, as the day progressed several schools in other parts of the city and on the outskirts also reported getting similar mails. “We cannot rule out the possibility of more schools receiving emails. Many school managements may not be checking all the email ids listed on their websites constantly,” said a senior police officer.
Four teams formed
Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant said four teams well versed with cyber investigations had been formed to track down the person or group of people behind the email. He expressed confidence that they would be caught soon. “As the emails were reported, we knew they were a hoax, but left nothing to chance. We painstakingly cleared each premises as safe after a thorough search,” he said.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and Primary and Secondary Education Minister B. C. Nagesh appealed to parents not to nurse any anxiety over security at schools and all necessary precautionary measures were being taken.
A. Subramanyeswara Rao, Additional Commissioner of Police (Bengaluru East), said all the emails had come from gmail ids and the city police were in touch with Google and service providers to track down the IP address of the sender. “We are confident of tracking the miscreant down shortly,” he said.
Another senior officer involved in cyber crime investigations said that the very fact that the threat emails had been sent from gmail ids, which are easily traceable shows that the sender was a “novice” and may not be “technologically sound”. The threat emails had been sent to email ids listed on the respective school websites, which shows it to be an “amateur desktop job”.
