For a second time in 2 weeks, bomb hoax at Delhi’s Pushp Vihar school

NEW DELHI: In the second bomb threat within two weeks,

Amity International School

in south Delhi’s Pushp Vihar on Friday received an email in which the sender had threatened to blow it up if not paid Rs 1 lakh. After finding nothing suspicious during a four-hour search, police declared it a hoax.
Investigators suspect the same individual might have sent the second threat, too, through an anonymous email service.

After receiving a PCR call from the school management on Friday morning, “teams from the local police station and the bomb detection squad reached the site and conducted a search with the help of a canine unit. However, they did not find anything suspicious”, an officer said.
The sender had demanded that Rs 1 lakh be delivered to a specific location and asked the management to take the threat seriously, a police source said. On Feb 12, the school was sent an email through the same service and asked to pay Rs 50 lakh. “This similarity suggests that the same individual may be responsible for both communications,” the source added.
A probe has been initiated to trace the sender’s IP address, which appears to be from a foreign country, said police. The investigators suspect the domain may be located in California and will soon write to the authorities concerned for the details.

The source added that a Board examination was being held at the school on Friday. “We ensured that there was no panic situation.” Police said they were making all efforts to nab the sender. “We suspect that the sender might be a boy or a fraud who wants to extort money by sending threats,” the source said.
Earlier this month, Delhi Public School in RK Puram had also received a similar threat email. A probe had revealed that the suspect had used the Tor browser to access the dark web and employed a virtual private network to send the email. “Although the sender remains untraced, efforts are under way to break through the VPNs and trace the originating IP address of the email,” said a senior officer.
Last year, Delhi Police had submitted a draft action plan on the steps to be taken by different stakeholders, such as local and traffic police, fire department and school authorities, to deal with such incidents and put a standard operating procedure in place.