Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 1: Panic gripped schools and the parents of the school-going children in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) after about 100 schools received bomb threat in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, police said.
Around 100 schools in both Delhi and Noida received emails on their official email IDs around 4 am. threatening a bomb attack on Wednesday early morning. The Delhi and Noida police quickly got all the premises evacuated and launched immediate searches with bomb disposal and dog squads and after finding nothing in any of the schools concluded this to be hoax call and by evening issued all clear signals. The Delhi education minister Atishi later announced that all schools would resume normal functioning from Thursday.
A senior Delhi Police officer later said investigation into the origin of the hoax emails with bomb threats sent to Delhi schools have revealed that while the sender used a Russian IP address, the role of an organisation behind the same was being probed. The central agencies are also investigating the matter. Officials said similar threats were received by airports in the last two days, and by hospitals on Monday. Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena and the home ministry have both said the threats appear to be hoaxes. “I request the parents not to panic, and cooperate with the administration in ensuring the safety of schools and the children. The miscreants and culprits will not be spared,” Mr Saxena said.
The investigating agencies said the emails originated from a server located in Russia using a single IP address to send the email to all schools. The Cyber team of the Delhi Police has also joined the investigation. Sources say the initial investigation shows that the email address, used to send the threat mail to over 100 schools in Delhi-NCR, had a Russian domain. However, the police are yet to ascertain whether the email actually originated from Russia.
The police is now tracking the IP address of the email address. Sources said these kind of emails are usually sent using a VPN connection to enable the sender to mask the original IP address. The cyber team is confident of tracing the IP address. Sources in the investigation team also say that the Dark Web could have been used to send the threat mail. In order to cover all flanks different teams of the Delhi Police are working on different aspects of the investigation. The Noida, Ghaziabad, and Delhi police are conducting a joint investigation to address the situation.
A more sinister angle has emerged in the bomb hoax emails with the police now investigating whether there was a terror link to them. With the emails being traced back to a Russian domain using the internet protocol (IP) address, the Delhi Police’s Special Cell is looking into a connection with that country as well as Pakistan, sources have said.
The suspicion is that the threat was sent at the behest of the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) by an ISIS module, said an official. Giving this theory credence is the fact that verses of Quran have been quoted in the alleged email and the email ID from which the threats were sent to the schools is sawariim@mail.ru. Sawariim, an Arabic word, has been used extensively in ISIS propaganda since 2014. An official said the Islamic terror group has been plotting a cyber war against India and that the ISI was helping it do so.
Students were sent home early in all the schools after they received the bomb threat via emails. A thorough search was conducted at all the institutions, but nothing suspicious was found. Delhi Public School, Noida, Principal Kaamini Bhasin said, “We received a mail regarding a bomb. We decided not to take any risk and also informed the police. The parents have been informed and the students have been sent back home.”
As news of the threats spread, the Delhi Government’s Directorate of Education issued a statement confirming that no dangerous devices or suspicious activity were found in any of the affected schools.
“Today, few schools of Delhi got hoax bomb calls/ mails. Nothing adverse/ questionable was found anywhere by Delhi Police. All our students and teachers are safe. All are requested not to panic. To relieve the parents, students were allowed to leave if parents had reached school,” Delhi Government’s Directorate of Education said in a post on X.
Delhi Police PRO Suman Nalwa confirmed that nothing suspicious was found at any of the schools during investigation. “Several schools have approached us that they have received an email regarding a bomb in their campus. Delhi Police has conducted search operations but nothing untoward has been found so far… It seems someone has done this to create panic… I just want to request the parents to not get panicked. We are conducting an investigation regarding the same,” the Delhi Police PRO said.
Delhi Minister Atishi took to social media platform X, and said some schools have received bomb threats today morning. “Students have been evacuated and those premises are being searched by Delhi Police. So far nothing has been found in any of the schools. We are in constant touch with the Police and the schools. Would request parents and citizens not to panic. School authorities will be in touch with parents wherever needed,” she said.
Atul Garg, Director of Delhi Fire Services said they received around 60 calls about bomb threats in schools. “Around 8 am, when we received the first few calls, I alerted all our staff, we postponed all our work to attend all the calls, we immediately sent fire tenders and fire tenders have started returning from some schools because nothing has been found and we suspect all the calls will turn out to be hoax…” he said.