Minor boy detained in Bengaluru for hoax bomb threat email

Bengaluru

The Basaveshwara Nagar police on Saturday detained a minor boy for sending a bomb threat email to a private school in Rajajinagar from his mother’s iPad on Thursday night.

Tension gripped the school on Friday as the management read the mail, which stated that there was going to be an explosion at lunch time, and informed the police before evacuating the school and declaring a holiday. The police along with a bomb disposal squad reached to the spot and checked the premises, and confirmed it was a hoax mail.

Based on a complaint by the school management, the police registered a case and tracked down the boy through the IP address. The boy, 14, is a class VIII student of another school, and has many friends in the school that he sent the threat e-mail to.

The police, who recorded the boy’s statement, said he Googled for the school’s email ID and sent the mail without realising its consequences. The boy will be produced before the Juvenile Justice Board.

“It is high time that the schools conduct awareness campaigns on cyber safety and cyber law, since all students from the age of 10 onwards access computer, Internet and smartphones,“ Lakshman Nimbargi, DCP (West) said.

In July last year, in a similar case, the police tracked down a hoax bomb threat email to a class X student of the same school in R.R. Nagar. He had sent the mail from his father’s laptop to get class tests postponed.