Security agencies need to quickly find a way to track the culprits and neutralise them
Emboldened by the failure of the Indian security establishment to crack the source of the recent spate of hoax emails threatening to blow up schools, hospitals, airports and other mass gathering venues in various parts of the country, have further emboldened miscreants or anti-India forces in their game of spreading large scale panic.
In this continuing string of emails, dozens of schools in Jaipur and a few in Lucknow were targeted on Monday, which happens to be the 16th anniversary of the synchronized serial bomb blasts in Jaipur in 2008 in which 71 people lost their loves and dozens of others were injured.
As happened on all previous occasions since May 1, when 100+ schools in Delhi and other NCR areas received bomb threats on mail, these threats after thorough searches were found to be hoax. Nevertheless, taking no chances schools evacuated their students and staff, and bomb detection and disposal squads had to be rushed to all the venues.
Despite independent and coordinated efforts, specialized units of various security agencies have so far not been able to trace the source of these emails since these have apparently been sent using virtual private networks (VPNs) or proxy servers, which make it very difficult to trace the IP addresses of the senders.
After the threats in Delhi-NCR, schools in Gujarat were also targeted.
Yesterday (Sunday), several hospitals in Delhi and 12 airports, including IGI Delhi and Jaipur, were targeted with bomb threats through emails.
These threats, coming as they are in the midst of heightened security nationwide in the wake of the ongoing elections, are a cause of worry for the security establishment, which cannot afford to take chances, and panic in the general public.
The security agencies need to quickly find a way to track the culprits. Can they allow the country be held to ransom!
