Delhi student detained for fake bomb threat to her own school, sent in hope of a four-day break
Police in India's capital Delhi have detained a 16-year-old Class Eleven student on allegations of sending a fake bomb threat to her own school in the hope of a long break. Reports say she sent the threat email so that, if the school closed on Friday, she would get four consecutive days off.
According to Indian media reports, the email was sent on 23 October to the Air Force Bal Bharati School on Lodhi Road in Delhi. Its subject line read: 'A bomb has been placed in your building.'
After the threatening message arrived, the school authorities and police swung into action. The South Delhi cyber police station began a technical investigation, reviewing the email, digital evidence and service-provider records.
The investigation revealed that the sender was not an outsider but a student of the same school. Police reached her by matching device and IP-related information obtained from service providers.
It is alleged that the student used her mother's phone and a free VPN app to send the email. Although the VPN was meant to hide her identity, the app failed to work properly because of heavy traffic, making it possible to identify the phone's real location.
South Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police Anant Mittal said investigators identified the sender as a student of the school itself. She was detained on Saturday.
The student's aim was to get the school closed for that day. As Monday was a government holiday for Valmiki Jayanti, a Friday closure would have given her four consecutive days off.
A case has been filed against the detained student under the juvenile justice law, and legal proceedings in the matter are ongoing.
Notably, the detention came amid a series of threatening emails being sent to schools across the capital. On Friday morning itself, three more schools received bomb threats.
Those three schools were Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Lodhi Estate, Venkateswara Global School in Rohini and Salwan Public School in Mayur Vihar. As a precaution, all three were evacuated.
Police, firefighters, bomb disposal squads and trained dogs then searched the buildings. However, the news agency PTI said nothing suspicious had been found in the searches so far.
Police are continuing the investigation to identify who sent those emails. With one fake threat after another spreading panic in schools and disrupting lessons, investigators see this detention as a potentially important lead.
