Hoax bomb mail causes panic at regional transport office in Thiruvananthapuram

Thiruvananthapuram: A bomb threat message received at the regional transport office on Monday morning spread panic among the officials and the public for some time.

The email stated that the bomb placed at the office would detonate at 8:15am, but the officials saw the message only after 9am. Soon, police and bomb squads were alerted, but nothing suspicious was found during the inspection.

The message was sent from the ID drezhilanaganathan@outlook.com on Sunday night. The emails were sent to three IDs: Kl01.mvd@kerala.gov.in, Kl01.rto@kerala.gov.in and Kl01.jrto@kerala.gov.in.

City cyber police began a probe after registering a case under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 351 (1) (b) for criminal intimidation, sections of the Kerala Police Act 118 (b) for knowingly spreading rumours or giving false alarms to mislead police, fire brigade, or any other essential service and 120 (o) for causing nuisance or violating public order. They also registered a case under sections 43 and 66 of the Information Technology Act 2000.

The incident comes a month after a hoax bomb threat spread panic among people for hours at the collectorate. This is the fifth hoax bomb threat in the city in the last seven months. In one of the cases, a Telangana-based man was identified as the one behind the hoax threat and in other cases, the team is yet to find the culprits.

"We have requested the Microsoft team to share the details of the account from which the mail was sent. The IP details and other data were also requested from other agencies as well. Even though such hoax threats have become common, we do not ignore any such threats," said city police.