BENGALURU: Two M Tech students from the city have been arrested for sending hijack threat mails to airport officials in their professors’ names.
Vexed with their professors who gave them low scores in exams, the two students belonging to East West College of Engineering in the city, came up with this plan to get back at them. They were allegedly unhappy that their professors favoured the girls in the class while the male students got low scores, especially in internal assessment.
The accused have been identified as Raghavendra (26), a resident of Basaweshwarnagar and Hoysala (23), resident of Ullal, both first year M Tech students of East West Engineering College in the city.
According to police officials, the duo sent their first mail to an airport official working with Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) on March 22. The mail was sent from the id: shubakl101@gmail.com. In the mail, they threatened to “keep bomb in the airport” if the airport officials refused to give Rs 10 million to the secretary of India Unit for Dawood Ibrahim’s gang. Along with that, they attached photographs of three of their professors- Prasanna Kumar, Dhanraj and Chandan naming them as members of Dawood Ibrahim’s gang.
The airport police had registered a complaint and were investigating the case when on May 6, another similar mail was sent from the same mail ID. The mail said they would hijack the flights “today” and also would place bomb in the airport “tomo” .
After that, the airport police had kept a close track and with the help of cyber crime officials they were able to track the mails to a computer in East West College. Raghavendra had completed his engineering from Vivekananda Institute of Technology and had taken two years extra to clear all the papers while Hoysala has been studying in East West College for the last five years.
Speaking to Express, a police official said the mails had caused crores of rupees loss to the airport as flights had to be delayed for security reasons. “On March 22, all the flights were delayed as they checked each and every flight after that mail.”
Cases have been booked against the two students under IPC sections 177 (furnishing false information), 505 (public mischief), 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication), 386 (extortion by causing fear).