Chennai woman sent hoax bomb threats to frame man for refusing to marry

The senior IT consultant sent threats to 11 states

Ahmedabad: The Cyber Crime Branch, Ahmedabad city, on Monday said it has arrested a Chennai-based senior consultant with an MNC IT firm for allegedly sending hoax bomb threats to as many as 11 states in an attempt to frame her former colleague, who had refused to marry her.

Officials said that Rene Joshilda, a senior consultant with Deloitte in Chennai, was arrested from her residence for sending a total of 21 emails to various entities, threatening to blow up locations including the Narendra Modi Cricket Stadium, schools, and civil hospitals in Ahmedabad. Investigations also revealed that she had sent similar emails to 11 other states.

“She did all this to frame her former colleague, Divij Prabhakar, who refused to marry her. It was a one-sided love affair,” said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Sharad Singhal, while briefing the press.

Singhal said that cyber crime officials traced her using detailed technical surveillance and digital forensics after identifying the origin of the emails. He added that Joshilda, who worked with Deloitte, a US-based IT firm, in Chennai, had used VPNs (multiple virtual private networks), fake email IDs, and the dark web to conceal her identity and location.

Singhal further said that Joshilda had previously created several fake IDs on social media platforms to prank and harass her acquaintances. “Her motive behind sending such threatening emails prima facie appears to be personal revenge and psychological harassment,” he said.

Joshilda even created fake email IDs in the name of Divij Prabhakar and sent threatening messages. One of the emails, dated 3 June 2025, was sent to Geneva Liberal School from the address [e-mail]. It read:
“Police is sleeping. They cannot do anything. They don't know how to investigate properly. Only if children die, police will become active. We are going to blast the bomb in your school to bring to police attention about the rapist who raped the girl in Lemon Tree Hotel in Hyderabad in 2023.”

She also used email IDs such as [e-mail] and [e-mail], which contained threats like: “Bomb successfully planted and army involved in this mission for Operation Sindhoor,” and “Police in India cannot do anything. We will keep giving you updates,” among others.

According to Singhal, in one of the emails, Joshilda even claimed responsibility for Air India’s Ahmedabad–London plane crash on 12 June, in which 241 people on board were killed, along with at least 20 fatalities on the ground.

Joshilda’s profile, shared by the police, states she had previously worked as an application development senior analyst with Accenture. She holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a PGP executive education qualification in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

According to police, she first came into contact with Divij during the company’s virtual meetings and met him in person in Bengaluru in 2022. Police said she developed romantic feelings for Divij, which remained unreciprocated. However, this did not stop her from stalking him both online and offline.

Joshilda allegedly faked photographs with Divij to claim that they were married and circulated the images within their friend circle to harass him. Divij subsequently filed a complaint with the Chennai Cyber Cell. According to police, what enraged her further was the news of Divij’s upcoming marriage in February this year.

Between February and June 2025, she is alleged to have sent multiple bomb threat emails using Divij’s identity to schools, stadiums, and hospitals across 12 states, including Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Maharashtra, among others. Singhal said that these states were being informed for further investigation.