“I was in the middle of my yoga class when I received a call from my children’s schools informing me they would be sent home due to a ‘bomb threat’. I immediately rushed to my daughter’s school while my husband went to my son’s school to get them home. Later, we learnt that the threats were a hoax, but when I received that call, panic set in within a second,” said Gowri Raj, a resident of Yelahanka, about 20 kilometres from the city centre, remembering the events of December 1.
She was not alone. Nearly 70 schools in and around Bengaluru received the same “bomb threat email” from [email protected] on December 1. It threatened to kill “you and your children” and said, “From Buddha to infinity they will fly apart from our explosions”. It even targeted Zionists and signed off with “Allahu Akbar”.
The children had been in school for just an hour or so. Bengaluru, the IT capital of the country, plunged into chaos and was gripped by panic in a matter of minutes. Even parents who hadn’t received intimations from their children’s schools were alerted by rolling television coverage. They rushed there and demanded that they be allowed to take their wards back home.
