Police and bomb disposal squad dog personnel conduct a search operation at a school that received threats.
Credit: PTI
Ahmedabad: Nearly 20 schools in the Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts received bomb threat emails, causing widespread panic among students and parents. The threats led authorities to enforce security measures, while the fear also gripped schools that hadn't received any threats, which later turned out to be hoaxes.
Police officials said that various prominent schools in Ahmedabad as well as Gandhinagar received identical emails claiming that there would be "BOmB Blast @1:11 pm." It emails also named Amit Shah and Lawrence Bishnoi as targets, citing revenge for the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.
The email mentioned "Ahmedabad Dhamake Blasts-Schools to Sabarmati Jail tak. Now Amit Shah-Lawrence Bishnoi Will be Targeted On 900 Days of Khalistan Referendum organizers assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada By Indian Foot Soldirs-Lawrence Bishnoi ...Issue is KHALISTAN REFERENDUM-Attwadi Hindu Amit Shah Will Face Consequences," the email read.
"About ten schools in Ahmedabad received these threat emails following which anti-sabotage squads including bomb detection and disposal squad, dog squads, among others were rushed to these schools. They had to cancel afternoon classes. Our teams screened the school premises as well as school buses for transporting children back to school," a senior police officer told DH.
Government spokesperson Jitu Vaghani while briefing the media stated that about 10 to 15 schools received such threat mails. "The children were sent home as part of precautionary measure. As of now, nothing suspicious was found from these schools and we think that it was hoax but we enforced security measures. The government has handed over the investigation to Ahmedabad Crime Branch to find out from where these mails were generated and who sent it."
The threat emails sparked panic among school staff, students, and parents, many of whom rushed to pick up their children. While the schools which received these threats were vacating their premises, dozens of schools which didn't receive such threats also had to cancel their afternoon session as many parents came to pick up their children.
Barely two days ago, 11 schools in Jalandhar had received similar emails. Similar instances were reported in various other places across states such as Punjab, Haryana and Delhi.