‘Guests will be sent to god’: Bomb threat sent to Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel; two hospitals get similar emails

When the hotel management checked their emails in the morning, they found the threat and immediately made a PCR call. A bomb detection squad and a dog squad were rushed to the hotel; they checked all the floors of the building, but found the mail to be a hoax, the police officer said.

Besides, the two hospitals received similar threat emails in the afternoon.

According to an official of the Delhi Fire Service (DFS), a call regarding the bomb threat was received from Max Hospial Shalimar Bagh at 3.57 pm and from Max Hospital Dwarka at 4.47 pm. Nothing suspicious was find during the searches, the police said.

After a thorough security check, authorities have declared the threat a hoax. The safety and security of our guests and employees is of paramount importance to us, and we continue to remain vigilant,” a Taj Palace spokesperson said.

No immediate reaction was available from Max Hospital.

Though attempts are being made to trace the origins of these emails, chances of reaching the perpetrator are slim — like other cases of bomb hoax emails in the past, police suspect these emails too were sent using a VPN.

VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is an encrypted connection over the Internet that helps the sender hide their identity.

The threats came a day after a similar email was sent to the Delhi High Court, disrupting court proceedings.

The email arrived at 8.38 am on Friday on the official email ID of the HC. It was sent through Outlook.com, a police officer had said.

The hoax message to the HC claimed that three bombs had been planted on the premises and that the building should be vacated by 2 pm. The email claimed that the accused had established “links with the ISI in Coimbatore” and threatened to “recreate the 1998 blasts”.

Hours later, the Bombay High Court also received a bomb threat on its official email ID.

The police on Saturday said a case has been registered at the Cyber Police Station of the New Delhi district in connection with the bomb threat to the Delhi High Court, and a dedicated team has been assigned to identify the sender’s user ID.

In the last year, over 30 such bomb threats have been sent to schools, hospitals and several public institutions, causing large-scale disruption and panic.

This year saw several schools getting threats. A similar bomb threat email had disrupted work at the Delhi Chief Minister’s Secretariat, Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) and University College of Medical Sciences on Tuesday (September 4).

(With PTI Inputs)