New Delhi: Four hospitals in the national capital received bomb threat call on Tuesday. This comes weeks after several schools in New Delhi as well as many other cities around the country received bomb hoax emails.
Delhi State Cancer Institute near the GTB Hospital in Dabri, Hedgewar Hospital, and Deep Chand Bandhu Hospital have received bomb threat calls, the Delhi Fire Department said. Many bomb hoax messages have been received in the last few weeks and security is also tightened throughout the country given the ongoing Lok Sabha Elections.
Almost a hundred schools in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Delhi received hoax bomb emails on May 1, triggering panic among the school administrations and parents. On 6th May seven schools in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad received bomb threats via email and were sent from servers with Russian IP addresses. No suspicious materials were found during the searches conducted by the bomb squad.
Similar bomb threat emails were received on Sunday at the Delhi airport and several other addresses including major hospitals in the city. It turned out that the threats were false later. Four schools in Jaipur received bomb threats via email yesterday. A bomb squad and sniffer dogs were sent to the places, and the kids were transported back home right away.
On a previous occasion, on Sunday, 20 hospitals, the IGI airport, and the Northern Railways’ CPRO office in Delhi received bomb threats via emails. These threats were received from a Europe-based mailing service company named ‘beeble.com’. The police are investigating the origins of the threats, particularly focusing on the sender ID “courtgroup03@beeble.com”.
The threatening emails warned the recipients of the presence of explosive devices within the facilities and demanded that they defuse them immediately, failing which the institutions would be held accountable for any casualties. “I have placed explosive devices inside your building. They will explode in the following hour. This isn’t a threat, you have a few hours to disarm the bomb or else the blood of innocent people inside the building will be on your hands. The group called ‘Court’ is behind this massacre,” the content of the letter read.
The Delhi Police suspect that these emails were sent using VPNs (virtual private networks) or proxy servers to conceal the sender’s IP address. The Special Cell of the Delhi Police is likely to file an FIR and undertake further investigation. Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla held a review meeting with senior authorities in response to these instances, emphasizing the need to improve school security measures, such as CCTV surveillance and routine email monitoring.
The Bomb threats were also given to the hospitals, police received the first report from Burari hospital at 3 PM on Sunday. Police investigations were prompted after reports from multiple hospitals throughout the city. Nevertheless, these searches turned up nothing unusual.
The affected hospitals included prominent healthcare facilities such as Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal-3, Burari Hospital, Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Bara Hindu Rao Hospital, Janakpuri Super Speciality Hospital, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, and Dada Dev Hospital in Dabri, among others.
Police extended their searches to include additional hospitals that had also received threat emails, including Guru Nanak Dev Eye Hospital, Gramin Swasthya Prashikshan Sansthan in Najafgarh, and ILBS in Vasant Kunj.
