PTI office in Chennai receives bomb threat, turns out to be hoax: Police

Chennai: About 30 e-mail bomb threats have been received in Chennai in the last one month, including the one targeting PTI office here on Friday and all of them have turned out to be hoax, police said.

The bomb threat to the office of the country's premier news agency located at Kodambakkam was sent through email and currently investigation was under way to trace the sender, a senior police official said.

Initially a police team arrived at the PTI office and evacuated the staff present there. Later a police sniffer dog squad and Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) conducted a thorough check in the premises and nothing suspicious was found, police said.

Preliminary investigation revealed that the sender had issued the threat through a fake email ID, to the DGP office, the official said.

"We have received 20-30 email bomb threats since the past one month and in all those cases, such threats were sent from fake email IDs. We are engaged in tracing the IP addresses to narrow down on the sender," the official told PTI.

The police have been receiving similar threats to the office and residence of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, residence of actor-politician Vijay, BJP state headquarters Kamalalayam and Puthiya Thalaimurai Tamil TV channel office.