KOLKATA: 'A few hours are left and after that explosions will happen.'
Judges at their offices in courts in Kolkata and several other districts across West Bengal received this email message from an unknown sender on Tuesday triggering panic at the court complexes.
The messages were sent to the judges a day after judicial officers started verification of the documents related to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal on 23 January. Police are exploring whether the mails are linked to the deployment of judges for the SIR document scrutiny process.
At least six district courts in the state, including two in Kolkata, had to be vacated and searched on Tuesday afternoon following the bomb scare triggered by the e-mails, police said.
The bomb scare prompted the state chief secretary Nandini Chakraborty, director general of police (DGP) Peeyush Pandey and commissioner of police (CP) Supratim Sarkar to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the situation on Tuesday afternoon at the state secretariat Nabanna.
Sniffer dogs and bomb disposal squad personnel were sent to the City Civil and Sessions Court and the Bankshall Court in central Kolkata after an e-mail received by a court office claimed that bombs were planted inside the premises. The search yielded no result.
Similar incidents happened at the Chinsurah court in Hooghly district, the Asansol and Durgapur courts in West Burdwan district and the Berhampore court in Murshidabad district.
The Supreme Court on 20 February had directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to engage judicial officers for the SIR document verification work and complete the process of the final publication of electoral rolls by 28 February in the state.
On Tuesday morning, the apex court directed that judicial officers from Odisha and Jharkhand could be deployed in addition to the 250 acting and retired judicial officers from Bengal's district courts to dispose of around six million disputed claims filed by voters during the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls.
Manoj Agarwal, West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), said the state must provide safety and security for the judicial officers deployed for the SIR exercise.
Some judicial officers present in a meeting with Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Sujoy Paul on Monday had expressed fear about their safety and security during SIR work in several highly sensitive areas in districts like Malda and Murshidabad.
"We are investigating the source of the mails. The pattern is the same. All the district judges are working in their respective areas. The state government is working actively to ensure their safety and security so that the SIR exercise is not affected," Chakraborty told media after the meeting held at Nabanna.
The CP said, "Our cyber crime wing is trying to trace the source of the e-mail. We will take strong action once the sender is identified."
Police could not find any explosive device at any of the five courts till 2 pm. However, security at several other courts was beefed up in view of the panic.