Ahmedabad, March 3 In a joint operation, the Ahmedabad city crime branch and cyber cell have arrested a man from West Bengal for the recent wave of hoax bomb threat emails targeting schools and courts in Gujarat, police said on Tuesday.
In the past few months, several schools in Gujarat and courts have repeatedly received bomb threat emails, causing significant public alarm and a nightmare for security agencies. All these bomb threat emails later turned out to be a hoax.
"In a landmark joint operation, the Ahmedabad crime branch and the Ahmedabad cyber crime unit have successfully arrested the individual responsible for the recent wave of hoax bomb threat emails targeting schools and courts. This operation marks a major breakthrough in maintaining public safety and digital security," said a police release.
The accused, Sourav Biswas, was apprehended from West Bengal and brought to Gujarat, where he is currently in police custody, according to the crime branch release.
Investigative teams are currently interrogating the suspect to uncover the motive, potential accomplices, and technical methods used to bypass security protocols. Biswas had used sophisticated methods, including a VPN (virtual private network), to conceal his identity, it said.
The operation was conducted under the supervision of Ahmedabad Police Commissioner G S Malik and the leadership of Joint Commissioner of Police (crime branch) Sharad Singhal.
Recent mass hoax bomb threats sent via email to educational institutions and judicial courts had caused significant public alarm, said the release.
As many as 34 schools in Ahmedabad and Vadodara had received bomb threat emails on February 16. Police had promptly evacuated these campuses and thoroughly checked them before declaring the emails a hoax as nothing suspicious was found during the searches.
On February 17, six courts in Gujarat had received bomb threats via email, after which authorities had conducted extensive searches, which yielded nothing suspicious.
Around a dozen schools in Ahmedabad had received an email threatening bomb blasts on January 22, which also turned out to be a hoax.
On December 25, as many as 10 private schools in Ahmedabad had received an email threatening bomb blasts, but nothing suspicious was found during searches by police.