Threats to Bengaluru schools originated from at least 2 servers, were sent early on Dec 1
The Bengaluru police are probing whether the threats are part of similar incidents in different parts of the world.
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The police have constituted a special team under an additional commissioner of police consisting of cybercrime policemen to investigate the bomb threats received at Bengaluru schools last week. (Express file photo by Jithendra M)The bomb threats received by 68 schools in and around Bengaluru on December 1 were sent from multiple variations of email IDs registered with at least two service providers and carried multiple time stamps, the preliminary investigations by the police show.
The Bengaluru police have sought information from the email service providers whose servers were used to send the threat emails to these Bengaluru schools. They are looking at whether the threats are a part of similar incidents reported from different parts of the world including some linked to social media dares.
The police investigations have revealed that the emails were sent with the khariijites@beeble.com, khharijites@beeble.com, kharijittes@beeble.com, khariijites@topmail.com email IDs. They were sent to the general mail IDs of the schools that are in the public domain between 5.45 am to 7 am on December 1. One of the earliest time stamps in the emails is 5.48 am.
“The mail servers that were used to send the threat emails were accessed using masked virtual private networks,” a police source said.
“Unlike the emails sent in 2022, the current emails seem to have a more serious tone and stand. We are viewing the case in a serious manner this time,” added the source.
In April 2022, as many as 16 schools in Bengaluru had received bomb threats from mail IDs – including baronsmasarfm@gmail.com. The investigations in the cases led to a 16-year-old in Tamil Nadu who had created a code for sending bulk emails. The probe was closed on account of the suspect being a juvenile.
The police have constituted a special team under an additional commissioner of police consisting of cybercrime policemen to investigate the bomb threats received at schools last week.
As many as four First Information reports (FIRs) have been registered about the bomb threats at police stations in and around Bengaluru after the initial filing of non-cognizable reports. The FIRs have so far been registered on complaints by the Delhi Public School, Bangalore West, the Oakridge International School, the Ebenezer International School, and the Bishop Cottons Boys School.
The FIRs have been filed under sections 66 C and 66 D of the Information Technology Act, 2008, and for criminal intimidation and malicious acts to outrage religious feelings under sections 506 and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The police have not invoked Section 66 F of the Information Technology Act which covers cyber terrorism in the FIRs on account of the hoax nature of the bomb threats, police sources said.
There have been incidents of mass threat emails being sent to schools in Northeastern Europe—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—and even in the US and Poland in recent months.
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