BHOPAL: Cops in Madhya Pradesh were on high alert after two emails received on the same day threatened to blow up a bank and ordnance factory at two separate places in the state.
While the first e-mail was received in the state’s most populated city and commercial capital Indore, the other was received by the management of the ordnance factory in Itarsi in central MP’s Narmadapuram district. Both the mails were sent on Thursday.
In Indore, the mail, which was received by staff at the Punjab National Bank (PNB), threatened to blow up its branch in the thickly populated Siyaganj commercial area.
Acting on a complaint from the bank, teams of the Indore police’s bomb detection and disposal squad (BDDS) conducted an extensive search in the bank branch, but nothing incriminating was found.
In Itarsi, the office of the general manager of the ordnance factory received the mail at 10 am on Thursday, containing a threat to blow up the factory.
“Along with the staff of the ordnance factory, we conducted a thorough search on Thursday. Our BDDS teams continued the search operation on Friday also, but nothing has been found so far anywhere. A case has been lodged on the complaint by the ordnance factory management under Section 351(4) BNS and 66(F) and further investigations are underway,” Narmadapuram district’s additional SP Ashutosh Shukla said.
Two months ago, two similar bomb threats had kept the MP police busy on February 18. While the Ballia-Lokmanya Tilak Terminus Kamayani Express train was stopped at Bina railway station in Sagar district and checked thoroughly following a phone call claiming that a bomb was planted in the long-distance train, an email about a bomb at a private school in Jabalpur district prompted the police to carry out a similar security check.
A few weeks prior to it, a similar email had led to the evacuation of students from two prominent private schools in Indore, followed by extensive checking by the BDDS teams.
A senior state police officer posted at the state PHQ in Bhopal said, “While the e-mail and telephonic threats so far have turned out to be hoaxes, the growing number of such threats are being closely monitored and investigated to find out a possible common link between them.”