More than 100 schools in Delhi-NCR region were shut down on Wednesday morning following a bomb scare.
Thousands of panicked parents rushed to schools to bring back their children even as the schools’ management started rapid evacuation process as soon as news of the threat spread.
Delhi Police sprang into action and school authorities along with cops ensured that the students were taken to the school ground before they were dispatched.
The Ministry of Home Affairs later said the threat was nothing but a hoax. Delhi Police has promised to dig out those behind this massive panic.
The schools received the bomb threat via e-mail.
Some schools received threat emails in their mail inbox at 6.30 am, while others received them in two parts, with the second portion arriving around 7 am.
To hide the origin, the emails were pushed out of various locations and IP addresses.
Bomb detection teams, bomb disposal squads and personnel from Delhi Fire Service were rushed to schools as police started receiving calls by the dozen about the bomb threat from worried parents and guardians.
Even if the threat was perceived to be a hoax, following SOPs and conducting a thorough investigation is crucial to upholding public safety and trust, according to Delhi Police.
“Thorough checking is going on. Bomb disposal squad, dog squad and fire tenders are present here… Even if it is a hoax call, we cannot take chances. We will conduct an investigation…,” said Ravinder Yadav, Commissioner of Delhi Police’s Crime Branch.
Bomb threats like this targeting schools and children, unfortunately, have emerged as a disturbing trend of late. Several reports in the recent past, which have received bomb threats, turned out to be hoaxes.
Many times, investigations have revealed that the emails are triggered by students who want to disrupt or cancel examinations.
Though such mass scares like in the case of Delhi and earlier in Bengaluru are rare, there have been frequent bomb threats to schools in India. However, many of them turned out to be false intimidation, just to create a situation of chaos and disorder.
In 2016, a series of bomb threats hit Delhi schools, causing widespread fear. Investigations revealed the callers to be students wanting to avoid exams.
Similarly, in 2019, a Mumbai school received a bomb threat, later traced to a 12-year-old student.
In 2022 too, two Bengaluru schools received hoax calls. It was later found that a student made the call to postpone an exam, in one case. Investigations in the other school revealed that the student made the call as a prank.
Just a couple of months ago in February, the Chennai Police said that bomb threat emails sent to 13 schools in Chennai looked like hoax mails as the police did not find anything suspicious.
After a bomb threat was received by Delhi Public School RK Puram, Delhi, via email in February 2024, claiming two devices were planted on the school premises, the police investigation revealed that the threat was a hoax.
Although the authorities were not able to trace the sender, some senior officers speculated that she/he may be students of the same school.
In May 2023, Delhi Police revealed that the sender of a bomb threat to the Delhi Public School in Delhi’s Mathura Road, was sent by one of its own 16-year-old students.
The minor told the police that it was “just for fun”.
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