Hoax bomb threats plague Delhi schools, govt institutions. What shields the senders?

So what helped officers track the senders in the cases they solved? The ones solved so far involve threats sent by schoolchildren who did not use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), an encrypted connection which helps the senders hide their identity.

So far, almost all major schools, both government and private, have received such emails. In the past six months, schools received over a dozen threats.

Speaking about cases that are yet to be solved, a senior police officer said that those involved emails sent via a VPN TOR or Proxy Servers, mostly based abroad. The officer said that when the servers are based abroad, they seek assistance from central agencies to collect details, but the IP address stays encrypted.

“Over the past few months, in most cases, the domains used in emails were traced to European countries. However, accessing the IP addresses or other sender details was nearly impossible as they were encrypted and masked using VPN or proxy servers,” the officer said, also highlighting how VPN is being used for “wrong things”.

Notably, the last 18 months has only recorded a rise in such threats. They kept landing even before that.

In 2022, a private school in Sadiq Nagar received such a threat, and in 2023, similar threats were sent to different schools on three separate occasions. In all these cases, the police zeroed in on students who were caught and counselled. These students said they mainly sent the messages or mails to either get exams cancelled, get a day off, or simply as a “prank”.

In May 2024, however, over 200 schools and other institutions received threat emails. Since the emails were sent in bulk, agencies rushed to register an FIR. A probe was also launched. The threats continued in June, August, October, and November, triggering concern in several schools, colleges, hospitals, airlines, and government institutions. The police decided to club all these cases under the initial FIR registered.

In December 2024, when it was found that a student had written the mail to his school. The student did not use a VPN, making it easier for the police to track him. The child was counselled and allowed to go.

Schools were sent threats throughout 2025. More than 35 emails were received from different IDs, and the police were unable to trace their origin.

In July 2025, an investigation allegedly revealed that a 12-year-old boy had sent threats to two educational institutions. He too was released after counselling.

During a counselling session, a Class 8 student revealed that he wanted schools to be shut down and had randomly added IDs while writing the threat mail. In this case too, the boy had not used a VPN.