New Delhi: Delhi Police are struggling to cope with a spate of bomb threats targeted schools, colleges, even govt offices, since mid-July. The investigations and cyber-trail analyses have not resolved the cases.More than 100 institutions, including Delhi University colleges, have received emails about bombs on the premises. While security searches turned up nothing, the frequency and the graphic detailed content of the messages have raised alarms. Police briefly detained a 12-year-old in July after one mail was traced to him, but beyond that, no major breakthrough has been achieved. In that particular case, the cops said, the mail was a prank.The use of masked IP addresses, VPNs and dynamic IPs that change frequently and display locations abroad has made tracking the emails a big challenge. These methods obscure the true location of the sender, with several locations appearing as the origin of the message. A police source revealed that one of the threats sent in July was routed through a German domain provider. The sender used VPNs that enabled anonymity and hindered the investigation.The threat messages follow a pattern of escalating detail. The mails sent on Tuesday to two medical colleges and the chief minister’s secretariat carried the subject line ‘Medical college – 3 bombs planted’. The sender warned of imminent destruction, claiming the devices had a “radius of one kilometre” and urging immediate evacuation. The mail also named a political party in its text, attempting to link the threat to political motives.A message on Aug 21 was even more elaborate. With the subject reading ‘URGENT: Terrorizers 111 x ViLE – BOMBS IN YOUR AREAS, DISARM OR FACE BLOODPOOL’, the mail declared that the mail senders had planted bombs in the hospital building and every major ward. The mail said, “Pipe bombs, chemical devices, timers in ICUs, operation theatres, maternity wards, emergency exits, and admin offices ready to rip everything apart. We hacked all your IT systems, breached in kodex portal and EDR’d every staff member, breached in LEEP portal and used it as a weapon to gather everyone’s information.”Just a day earlier on Aug 20, more than 60 schools in Delhi received a separate bomb threat. That mail, also sent under the name Terrorizers 111, claimed that “high-yield C4 bombs” and timed charges had been planted in classrooms, auditoriums, staff rooms and school buses. The sender demanded a ransom of $5,000 in cryptocurrency, threatening mass casualties if ignored.Police said each of these threats elicited the standard investigation protocol: evacuations, bomb squad checks and sweeps by sniffer dogs. Yet despite the scale of operations, nothing suspicious was ever found. The investigation has now shifted to tracking the origins of the emails, but the use of fake accounts and anonymised international servers has slowed the progress.
