BENGALURU: The Unit 1 of National Hill View Public (NHVP) School in Rajarajeshwari Nagar faced some tense moments after it received a bomb threat through an email on Monday morning. The police, after checking the school premises thoroughly, declared it a hoax.The threat was noticed by school authorities after they opened the mail in the morning between 8.30 and 9, while it was sent at 6.20 pm on Sunday from the ID, “huchcha venkat, hachaswamyvenkat96@gmail.com”. The mail read, “There is a bomb planted on the campus of the school. It will explode tomorrow at 10 o’clock. Try your best as the effect will be there for 200 feet radius. Thx with regards. bomb terrorist.”
The management of the school, owned by Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president DK Shivakumar, immediately alerted the police, who rushed with sniffer dog, anti-sabotage and bomb disposal squads. The police teams checked for explosives in the two buildings on the campus, the entire boundary and the parking area. After not finding any explosive substances, they concluded that it was a hoax threat, said Kumuda Raju, principal secretary and administration in-charge of the school.
She told The New Indian Express that over 1,800 children from pre-kindergarten to Class 12 were immediately evacuated and shifted to Unit 2 of the school in Banashankari and their Global Academy of Technology.
As the news of the bomb threat broke, panic-stricken parents rushed to the school. School chairman Aisshwarya DKS, who is Shivakumar’s daughter and also the trustee secretary (schools), arrived at the school. She informed the anxious parents that all the children are safe.
A parent, whose children study in Classes 5 and 10 at the school and had rushed from his office after hearing the news, said, “Aisshwarya told us that the school will drop the children back home in their school buses. She said the school will send messages and mails to parents as to when, where and at what time to pick up the children. We were relieved that the kids were not at risk.”
A grandparent of a Class 2 student said, “It is the question of small children. These culprits cannot play with the feelings of parents with such hoax threat mails to schools. There has to be strict action so that it becomes a lesson to others who send such mails”. The Rajarajeshwari Nagar police have taken up a case and are trying to trace the person who sent the mail. On April 8, over a dozen schools had received similar emails and the police have not made any breakthrough in the case.