56 schools in Jaipur receive bomb threat on 16th anniversary of serial blasts

Fifty-six schools in Jaipur received a bomb threat on Monday, 14 May, at a time when the city observed the 16th anniversary of serial bomb blasts that rocked Rajasthan's capital, killing scores of people and injuring many others, the police said.

The police team and bomb disposal squads rushed to the spot after receiving information about the bomb threats through an e-mail in the morning, following which children were also evacuated from all the schools safely.

Jaipur police commissioner Biju George Joseph said: "A total of 56 schools received bomb threats in Jaipur city. However, no such material was found in any school during a thorough probe, but the investigation is going on."

"All these e-mails have been sent by a common source which will be identified soon and legal action will be taken. There is an appeal to the citizens not to pay attention to any kind of rumours. The Jaipur Police is fully alert to maintain security in the city," he added.

Meanwhile, Rajasthan chief secretary Sudhansh Pant called an emergency meeting regarding the threat to bomb schools in Jaipur in which assistant chief secretary (home), Anand Kumar, and director general of police (intelligence), Sanjay Agarwal, were invited. They informed Pant about the ongoing operation after receiving the threatening mail.

Earlier on Monday, Rajasthan DGP, U.R. Sahu, confirmed that 37 schools in Jaipur had received the emails, which later rose to 56 by evening.

He said that the search in these schools started at 6 am.

"There has been no information about any suspicious object being found anywhere. Cyber teams have been deployed to detect the mail. The government is being updated on this entire incident. An investigation has revealed that these emails have been sent from Russian servers," he added.

Police officials said that all the school principals were sent a bomb threat via emails early Monday morning.

The entire schools hence were evacuated in a hurry.

Police are now busy extracting information about the email ID of the person who sent the mail. On Sunday, 12 airports in the country, including Jaipur, were threatened with bombs.

Police officials, meanwhile, are tightlipped and refuse to comment anything officially in this regard, but there is a strong possibility that the same organisation or gang may be behind the incidents in Delhi and Jaipur.

Preliminary investigation has revealed that Russian servers have been used in the e-mails sent at both places.

An e-mail has been sent to the schools of Delhi from the id awariim@mail.ru and to the schools of Jaipur from the id instrumenttt@inbox.ru.

Further investigations are underway, said officials.