Bomb hoax shuts down 100 schools in Delhi; 'Email traced' says Lt Governor

Panic gripped school students and parents early morning on Wednesday after at least 80 schools in Delhi-NCR received bomb threats via email on Wednesday morning, officials said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said it appears to be a hoax call and that there was no need to panic. Delhi Police said it has conducted a thorough check of all schools that received the bomb threat but nothing was found. “Some schools of Delhi received e-mails regarding bomb threats. Delhi Police has conducted thorough check of all such schools as per protocol,” Delhi Police said in a post on X.

“Nothing objectionable has been found. It appears that these calls seem to be hoax. We request the public not to panic and maintain peace,” it said. The Union Home Ministry on Wednesday termed the bomb threat to schools in the city and adjoining areas as a "hoax", and asked people not to panic.

It took some time for the police to trace the email's origin as it was sent using a virtual private network (VPN) that routed and rerouted data via foreign servers. The police managed to narrow down on the internet protocol (IP) address - a unique identifier - after retracing the VPN traffic and found the source of the email, sources said. Meanwhile, central agencies are also investigating the matter. Officials said that similar threats were received by airports in the last two days, and by hospitals on Monday. Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena today said the police have traced the origin of the hoax bomb emails.