CHENNAI/COIMBATORE: A private school in Gerugambakkam near Porur and its branch in Coimbatore received a bomb hoax email late on Sunday night. This is the second time the Porur school received threat in the last four days and the second time the Coimbatore institution received it in the last three days.
According to police, an email was sent to the Porur school on Sunday night. Early Monday morning when the authorities saw the mail, they alerted the Mangadu police which sent a bomb squad along with sniffer dogs to conduct checks.
A police source said, “Checks were conducted before the students started coming in and the threat turned out to be a hoax. Some of the students who came to the school with their parents were sent home. Others, those who have their examinations were made to wait in the playground. Both class 11 and class 12 exams were conducted without any problem.”
On Friday too, the Chennai school had received a bomb hoax through email. A case was registered by the cyber crime wing of Avadi police.
A senior police officer said, “Both emails were sent by the same person using the same email service. Since it is an ongoing investigation, we cannot reveal the name of the email service. A probe is on to trace nab the accused.”
The private school’s branch near Vadavalli in Coimbatore also received a bomb threat mail on Sunday night. The bomb squad declared the threat a hoax on Monday morning.
A senior police officer said that the cases would be transferred to CB-CID and are awaiting an official order. Police said the email service used by the sender to send similar hoax mails to 13 schools in February was end-to-end encrypted and used VPNs.
This had made it difficult to track the sender. According to media reports, after the police highlighted the issue, the Union IT Ministry was planning to block the email service in the country.
It may be noted that on Friday, a bomb hoax mail was also sent to the secretariat. A case was registered and an inquiry led the police to the sender, Prakash (47) of Cuddalore. Police found that he was psychologically disturbed.