41 airports, airline, hospitals, colleges: Deluge of hoax bomb threats in one day

Forty-one airports, including in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna, and Jaipur, received bomb threat emails on Tuesday (June 18), prompting authorities to scramble contingency measures and carry out anti-sabotage checks that lasted hours, and each of them was found to be a hoax.

Official sources told news agency PTI that security was beefed up as agencies swept the airport terminals after the emails were received around 12.40 pm from the ID exhumedyou888@gmail.com.

The airports in Varanasi, Chennai, Patna, Nagpur, Jaipur, Vadodara, Coimbatore and Jabalpur were among those that received the hoax threats.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in his parliamentary constituency of Varanasi on Tuesday, the first time after the Lok Sabha poll results were declared on June 4.

Same group at work

An online group called “KNR” is suspected to be behind these hoax threat emails. The group reportedly issued similar emails to several schools in the Delhi-National Capital Region on May 1, the sources told PTI.

The emails received by the airports carried almost the identical message: “Hello, there are explosives hidden in the Airport. The bombs will soon explode. You will all die.” The airports put into action contingency plans and carried out anti-sabotage checks following recommendations of their respective Bomb Threat Assessment Committees, the sources said.

Double threat for Mumbai, Chennai

Sources at the Mumbai airport said there was no impact on services as the threat was “non-specific”. But at the Chennai airport, a Dubai-bound flight with 286 passengers was delayed as a result of the hoax threat.

Soon after receiving the email warning of a bomb on the aircraft, security agencies conducted a thorough search of the flight but found nothing suspicious. The flight was later cleared to proceed to its destination.

A Mumbai-bound IndiGo flight from Chennai also received a bomb threat message, but it landed safely. The bomb threat message was received at the private airline’s call centre in New Delhi, a source told PTI.

“IndiGo flight 6E 5149, operating from Chennai to Mumbai, had received a bomb threat. Upon landing in Mumbai, the crew followed protocol and the aircraft was taken to an isolation bay,” the airline said in a statement.

Searches yield nothing

The Jaipur international airport authorities too mounted an inspection after receiving the bomb threat email. Police and CISF personnel searched the premises but did not find anything.

Authorities at the Nagpur and Patna airports also conducted thorough searches on their premises after receiving the hoax threat.

Patna airport director Anchal Prakash said, “A bomb threat through email was received at the Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport, besides 41 other airports. The Bomb Threat Assessment Committee (BTAC) Meeting was convened and it found the threat to be non-specific.”

All the airports reported the threat to be a hoax and passenger movements were kept unhindered to the best of the capacities, the sources said.

On Monday, the Delhi airport received an email around 9.30 am that warned of a bomb threat on a Dubai-bound flight but nothing suspicious was found during inspections.

Similar hoax emails were sent to several airports in April too, and Indian cyber security agencies are working to find the origin of these emails that have been sent from abroad.

Mumbai flooded with hoax calls

In a similar incident, more than 60 establishments in Mumbai, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), prominent hospitals and colleges received emails threatening bomb blasts, following which searches were carried out although nothing suspicious was found in them, a police official told PTI on Tuesday.

The emails were received on Monday and Tuesday from a single mail id, he said.

“The emails received on Tuesday were similar to those received on Monday, which said there was a bomb threat to prominent private, state and civic-run hospitals and colleges across the city,” he said.

As an investigation was underway, similar bomb threat emails were received by the BMC and other establishments. During the probe, the Mumbai Police conducted security checks of those establishments and later it came to light that somebody played a mischief as nothing suspicious was found at all these places, he said.

Process to register a case against unidentified persons is underway at the Azad Maidan police station, he said.

Hoax bomb threat in Kolkata

In Kolkata, authorities of the state-run SSKM Hospital and Rabindra Bharati University on Tuesday received bomb threat emails, prompting a search and the police to launch an investigation, officials said.

However, the threat mails turned out to be hoax, they said.

Teams comprising police personnel and bomb squad members were sent to both the places, but the search did not yield anything, an officer said.

The cyber section of the Kolkata Police has started an investigation to trace the source of the emails, he said.

“We appeal to people not to panic. We are taking adequate measures and our personnel will remain posted at these institutions,” he said.

(With agency inputs)